Leviathan: The Great European Divide

 Alphen, the Netherlands. 16 July.  In 1651 English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote “Leviathan” in which he said prophetically, “The only way to erect…a common power, as may be able to defend [men] from the invasion of foreigners, and the inquiries of one another... is to confer all their power and strength upon one man, or upon one assembly of men...Leviathan”.  Hunkered down behind the Eurozone crisis is Europe’s key existential question; can the future prosperity, stability and, indeed, democracy of Europeans be afforded by one single super-Leviathan?

The current crisis has painfully exposed what is the great European divide; those who believe in a greater ‘Europe’ and those suspicious of grand constructs that not only threaten hard won freedoms but also seek to replace the nation-state.  Sadly, friendships have been torn asunder over this issue; I too have lost a couple. 

Many continental Europeans are used to so-called ‘dirigisme’, diktat by fiat from above.  As an Englishman grounded in a political culture in which fundamental individual freedoms are sacrosanct the very idea of a European Leviathan is dangerous political folly.  It would require trust in a European political caste over which I have no writ. 

Later this year I will have the honour of addressing a meeting of senior French politicians and officials.  ‘L’Europe’ is very much a concept that France has championed.  Whilst it is a perfectly honourable creed it, ‘Europe’, begs the ultimate political and economic question; what is the ‘finalité’? 

First, there would need to be a European head of state, a real European president supported by a real European government led by a cabinet replete with European ministers, covering all the many competences of a modern state; a single system of justice and policing, sound economic governance and all aspects of ‘Home’ Affairs. Second, Europe’s five hundred million or so very disparate peoples with their myriad of cultures, traditions, beliefs and languages would need representation via a single European parliament credibly charged with powers of political oversight and made up of Europe-wide political parties.  Third, there would need to be a real executive supported by a European ‘civil service’ charged with implementing European policy and held to account by a functioning parliament.  Fourth, there would need to be a European Finance Ministry supported by a real European Central Bank that would act as a bank of last resort, much like the US Federal Reserve.  Finally, and critically, any such ‘state’ would send European citizens to their deaths in war in the service of a real European Army, Navy and Air Force.   

To make that work France would need to be scrapped, the French Government in Paris reduced to being little more than an English county council or more aptly a French departement.  Parliamentary democracy in France would be diluted some tenfold as by ratio of population to representation the size of European parliamentary constituencies increased in size some tenfold.  French national control over all main tax-raising powers and indeed all other aspects of sound money would be handed over to the European finance ministry.  The French would also need to abandon their armed forces, its military traditions, history and glory and subordinate it to a European Army.

Of course, money is the root of all evil.  The Europe on offer today is one of mutual impoverishment, which makes it different to the 'Europe' of yore.  For the first time European integration pre-supposes little or no economic growth.  In the past ‘Europe’ has been built on the transfer of surpluses from the taxpayers of the formerly rich north and west Europe to those of the poor south and east Europe.  How long can Western European politicians impose such transfers on their newly impoverished taxpayers in the name of Europe before they revolt? 

For me ‘Europe’ can only ever work as a tight alliance of nation-states in which the political centre of gravity remains national sovereignty under national parliamentary control ‘harmonised’ into a tool for strategic influence, both within Europe and beyond.  To that end the place of Brussels is to serve the European state, not replace it.  I will never compromise on this point. 

Shortly before his death Hobbes said, “I am about to take my last voyage. A great leap in the dark.”  He could well have been speaking of the giant leap into the political dark that is now taking place in Europe.  Ultimately, a European Leviathan would be an insult to the tradition of English and Scottish political thought that made parliamentary democracy possible – Hume, Locke, Mill, Smith et al.  And, if friendships are lost because I will not compromise on this fundamental political principle, then so be it. 

A European Leviathan; be careful what you wish for.

Julian Lindley-French

Will Someone Please Save Europe from Belgium?

Alphen, just over the Dutch border from Belgium.  Friday, the 13^th.  Will someone please save Europe from Belgium?  The influence of this chocolate superpower is growing by the day.  Now, my own country, Her Imperial Britannic Majesty’s Dis-United Kingdom, has made the odd mistake over the years.  We are good at mistakes. Indeed, London is currently working through Britain’s new foreign policy manual; “101 Mistakes To Make Before You Collapse”.  Perhaps Britain’s greatest mistake came at the very height of Empire – we made Belgium!  Yes, I know, it is a terrible admission to make and hardly a testament to sound British judgement.  Sorry.

The 1839 Treaty of London was a British-led deal between the Great Powers, the Dutch and the “Kingdom of Belgium” to create a buffer between the French and the Dutch.  Belgium was to be perpetually neutral and Britain was to guarantee Belgium.  Now, having led Western Europe’s only failed state to the heights of its ‘glory’ it is Belgians leading the way towards something all the more ambitious - a failed European super-state. 

Eveywhere I turn there are wild-eyed and ever so slightly dishevelled Belgians leading calls for the Super-Onion.  Be it Onion supremo ‘President’ Herman van Rompuy, or Chief Euro-Parliamentary Onionista Guy Verhofstadt.  Everywhere I turn Belgians are telling me I have no alternative but to bow to the ‘power’ of Belgium, sorry Brussels, and scrap my country so that Belgium can be made to work.  Did I miss something?

The latest piece from the chocolate superpower goes under the characteristically misleading title of “The European Council and the Community Method” (no, it is not some form of bizarre group sex but one does need a good smoke after reading it).  Written by one of those consummate Onion insiders Philippe de Schoutheete, former Belgian Ambassador to the Onion, it is a true horror story.

Like all good horror stories the paper starts by presenting the very essence of normality.  Europe was made up of a series of cozy hobbit-like shires nestling in the green and pleasant vale that was 1950s ‘Europe’.  Because the Hobbits had no issues that divided them they all agreed to come together to grow a European Onion.  However, because they were all as lazy as hell and did not really trust each other one little bit they also agreed to create something called the European Omission, whereby they all pretended to ignore their many disagreements and let some bloke called Manuel, a Portu-Belgian, decide things for them.  Of course, the Belgians maintained ultimate control by making their own lad Herman, King of the Belgians and President of Europe at one and the same time.  After a particularly damp period the Onion went mouldy and the only way to save it was to make the Omission responsible for ‘growth’, overseen of course by Herman.

And then the descent into horror quickens.  The good Ambassador cites the secret Treaty of Lisbon which the Belgians, sorry Brussels, had imposed after French and Dutch Hobbits had rather objected to their country being taken away simply to save Belgium.  The Belgians having given this democracy thing a try demonstrated that it did not work but avoiding a Belgian government for many years and decided this would also be good for Europe.  Thus, the only solution was to recast the Onion in the image of Belgium and overseen by the sprouts in Brussels.

At the end there is nowhere to run.  There is no life after debt.  Sooner or later the Onion crushes all before it and Europe is finally turned into Belgium; a happy but broke place where the people live happily ever after, love each other deeply but have no say over anything. At least the beer is good.

To be fair, the Ambassador is right about the essential challenge of our Euro-time; “One may ask whether the true debate today is not between the Community method and intergovernmental decision-making, but rather between governance and government”.  For those of you not-versed in Onion-speak the meaning is simple; is there any way we Hobbits will ever again trust the Muppets who have created this mess?  Moreover, is there any way that we can be convinced to give Belgium, sorry Brussels, even more power but ask less questions.  For that is what at the end the good Belgian Ambassador is offering.

He concludes with a warning.  “No political system can survive without giving hope to its citizens. Europe has been a great channel of hope for several generations, including mine. And today? It is not hope that encourages integration, it is market fears. Is this enough? What we see around us, rather, is hopelessness. Many Europeans do not see a light at the end of the tunnel. Who will bear a message of hope, if our leaders and institutions do not?"  Hope springs infernal - there is no life after debt but the Onion.   

British Prime Minister William Pitt once described Belgium as a “pistol pointed at the heart of England”.  It is about to be fired, if they can find the bullet.  Belgium - coming soon to a town near you. 

Julian Lindley-French

Can the Franco-British Strategic Defence Relationship Survive?

Alphen, the Netherlands.  11 July.  Can the Franco-British strategic defence relationship survive? Yesterday, at the close of a modest lunch in Downing Street, British Prime Minister David Cameron said he had, “found much common ground” with French President Francois Hollande.  Following discussions ranging from the Eurozone debt crisis to Syria and Iran Cameron talked of a “strong relationship” and that both agreed the planned increase of the EU’s budget to €14 billion ($25 bn) by 2020 was “unacceptable”.  Clearly, the many issues of contention, such as France’s call for a financial services transaction tax, were either avoided or kept secret.  Cameron only hinted at the fundamental issue dividing the two countries; “We are clearly better off within the European Union…but I don’t think Britain is happy with the current relationship”. 

The Franco-British strategic defence relationship matters. First, it is a key European-European state relationship beyond EU competence.  Second, it is perhaps the only European relationship willing to think big about military matters in a very big military world.  Founded on two landmark defence agreements the relationship has long been a strategic cornerstone.  The 1998 St Malo Declaration seemed for a time to have resolved tension between NATO and the EU’s defence ambitions and paved the way for the now moribund Common Security and Defence Policy. 

On 2 November, 2010 the Franco-British Defence and Security Treaty was signed and heralded a new dawn in the two countries’ strategic defence relationship.  The treaty called for “mutual interdependence” and the sharing and pooling of defence materials and equipment, the building of joint facilities and “mutual access” to each other’s defence industries.  In addition there were agreements over nuclear stockpile stewardship, a new framework agreement for exchanges on operational matters and a proposal for a Combined Joint Expeditionary Force.  At the time there was also agreement that Britain and France should work together on the next generation of aircraft carriers.  However, the British decision to revert to the use solely of carrier-based short and vertical take-off aircraft effectively scrapped that line of co-operation.

Two other developments have undermined the relationship. First, the Eurozone crisis has pitched Anglo-French relations into uncharted waters inevitably affecting the strategic defence relationship. France is not only at the heart of the crisis whilst Britain is fast becoming a full-paying third-class member of the EU, Paris has always seen such agreements as a step on the road to a full-blown European defence construct to which Britain is implacably opposed.  Economic union will in time make that more likely not less.  Second, the 2010 treaty came at a time when Cameron was still early in his premiership and was hoping to ‘rebalance’ Britain’s relationship between Europe and the US.  However, such a rebalancing pre-supposed a Britain that would not be forced to choose between its economic relationship with Europe and its strategic defence relationship with the US.  The January 2012 shift in US defence posture towards East Asia will indeed over time force Britain to choose. And, given the Great European Defence Depression the British are rightly going with the Americans, even though that will have its own problems.   

Given those pressures it will be a miracle if the Franco-British strategic relationship survives…but survive it must for the good of all.  In the short-term some sensitivity will be needed.  The British must not under-estimate the attachment of the French to the Euro as a symbol of the French view of Europe.  The French must stop lecturing the British about said view of ‘Europe’, and stop attempting to subordinate Britain to French ambitions and the bill that goes along with them.

Sadly, the toxic chemistry between the two countries makes trust a rare commodity.  Sometime ago I had a chat with a French four-star general whom I like and respect.  The conversation was not easy.  He told me a story of a recent deployment by the French aircraft-carrier Charles de Gaulle, which had been escorted by a British frigate.  He claimed that Paris learnt later that the frigate only had orders to protect itself.  He even called the British “perfidious”.  I checked.  Not only was mon general wrong, but London found working with the French proved difficult because agreed operational schedules were never maintained.  What is clear is that Paris does feel let down by London at times and has a point.  Britain and France need to rise above this kind of thing.

The road ahead will be rocky.  Cameron’s contradictory argument that more European integration is needed, but that non-integrating Britain is better off in the European Union is patent nonsense.  Something is going to have to give and unless the two countries can demonstrate a genius for statecraft both have lacked for many years then it is hard to see the Franco-British strategic defence relationship surviving.  That would be a shame given the world in which these two middling powers are moving.

Julian Lindley-French

All at Sea

Alphen, the Netherlands, 09 July. Admiral, the Lord Nelson, one-time senior naval super-person, once said that, “Desperate affairs require desperate measures”.  Had he attended the Royal United Services Institute Future Maritime Operations Conference 2012 in London he might have amended that to read, “Desperate affairs require desperate measures…and some new, radical, but above all strategic thinking”.  I came away from two days of debate with senior naval persons from many lands with a profound sense of ‘gap’ between the big, strategic role navies will and must play in the twenty-first century and the small, tactical thinking of those charged with making the case for future navies, particularly the British. 

Most telling for me was a breakfast meeting I attended to consider ‘sea-basing’.  I had prepared a major report for the head of the Royal Netherlands Navy to develop creative thinking in this area.  My intervention to that effect was met with the resounding thump of a good idea hitting the deck and being ignored.  It left me with a profound sense of senior military officers being simply unable or unwilling to think radically, unable to make a compelling case for expensive navies, and only really willing to listen to each other.  The rest of us were…tolerated.

This big futures twenty-first century will place Western navies right at the heart of strategy; influence, deterrence, dissuasion and defence.  However, we talked about almost everything but that – peacekeeping, supporting civil-military relations, counter-piracy, counter-drugs, supporting Afghanistan from the sea etc.  They are all important but they are not core business and we really must look beyond Afghanistan.  We only just touched on AirSea Battle and the access denial/area denial debate.

At times I thought I was attending a kind of floating politically-correct hell.  One academic offered a ridiculous, cartoon vision of modern Britain.  However, being of an ethnic minority Whitehall political correctness demanded all and sundry celebrate such nonsense.  It explained a lot.

Without a clear strategic ‘narrative’, and a means to sell it, strategically-inept politicians faced with ever more strident demands from the pressure groups and single-issue lobbyists who now infect democracy will cut navies to the point of strategic irrelevance.  In that event the world-wide strategic brand that is still the United States Navy, and to some extent the Royal Navy will be finally laid to rest and with them a key tool of strategic influence will be lost.  As I was speaking the British Defence Minister, Phillip Hammond was on his feet in the House of Commons announcing the Army 2020 plan by which the British Army will be cut from 102,000 to 82,000 over five years.

The conference at least offered a glimpse of the future.  This was the Anglosphere at sea.  In addition to the UK, senior naval speakers came from Australia, Canada, Ghana, New Zealand and the US.  There were no French, German, or Dutch speakers, although an impressive Italian Rear Admiral spoke.  Having been in Rome the previous week it is clear the Italians do not wish a) to be left alone in the European Onion without the British; or b) let go of the coat-tails of the Anglosphere.

Tellingly, I was upbraided for my suggestion that all was not well either between the three British services nor inside NATO.   That response demonstrated to me the kind of ‘steady as you go’ thinking that bears no relation to the mess in which we all find ourselves.

What is needed is a new concept of naval power which combines global reach with a shared warfighting ethos that in turn reflects a new balance between manpower and technology.  This concept requires in turn all the serious navies represented at that conference to learn far more effectively from each other and that means first and foremost learning how to learn.  That was not at all apparent and yet, ironically, that can be found in Army 2020.

Gentlemen, the bottom-line is this; the economic depression in which we are mired will likely get worse before it gets better.  Countries such as Britain will not be afforded the chance simply to get off the world for a bit to fix it.  Therefore, if the future navy that will be needed is to be afforded in sufficient numbers over a sufficiently reasonable timeframe at a cost that I can bear then you will need to build a much more coherent case with the Army and Air Force to forge the kind of organic jointness implicit in the Army 2020 plan, and across government. 

Given that reality my sense is that the leadership of Western navies (especially European navies) are being nothing like radical enough neither in their thinking about ways, ends or means nor in the building of all-important partnerships – both civil and military.

 

If we can get politicians thinking about navies they might just begin to think strategically. It is time to think radically about OUR navies otherwise they really will be all at sea.

Julian Lindley-French  

Bomber Boys

London, Bomber Command Memorial, 5 July. It is sixty-seven years too late.  The Bomber Boys gaze over me looking exhaustedly and exhaustively for comrades who will never return.  Seven RAF Bomber Command aircrew cast in bronze probably just off a Lancaster that has somehow miraculously survived a World War Two ‘trip’ over Nazi Germany.  Etched into the sombre Portland stone of London’s beautiful new monument to the men of Bomber Command are Churchill’s famous words of September 1940, “The fighters are our salvation, but the bombers alone provide the means of our victory”.

RAF Bomber Command flew 364,514 sorties during ‘the war’.  Of the 125,000 who clambered almost daily into Wellingtons, Halifaxes, Stirlings and, of course, the iconic Lancaster, 55,573 lost their lives.  Only the German U-Boat crews suffered greater losses of any service in any force anywhere.  Men had a 30% chance of surviving their first tour. As for the rest life was a lottery and they knew it.

Two weeks ago I had the honour to take breakfast in the mess at RAF Leeming sitting at a table where many young Britons and Canadians had eaten their final meal before being consumed by a fiery death over Germany.  Last week Her Majesty the Queen unveiled this simple memorial to very brave men in front of thinning ranks of veterans from many nations as a lone Lancaster dropped a field of poppies over London’s Green Park.

For five years with growing accuracy and intensity RAF heavy bombers pulverised German cities and killed large numbers of German civilians night after terrifying night.  One has only to visit a German city or read Max Hasting’s harrowing account of 5 Group’s 1944 attack on Darmstadt to get some understanding of the suffering that Bomber Command inflicted. 

However, whilst I regret the suffering I have long-learned not to judge a past age by the values of the current age.  This was total war that had to be fought and won totally against a regime that was seeking to subjugate Europe with its appalling mix of nationalism, racism and militarism. This was a regime that was sending millions to the gas chamber.  In 1940-1941 Luftwaffe attacks on British cities such as Coventry, London, my own Sheffield and many others led to tragic loss of civilian life.  Air Chief Marshal Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris made Britain’s position terrifyingly simple; “The Germans have sown the wind.  They will now reap the whirlwind”.  In August 1943 that whirlwind hit Hamburg which over two nights was virtually obliterated by the RAF.  The damage was so great that Goebbels told Hitler that a few more raids like that and the war would be lost. Cologne, Kassel, Berlin and of course Dresden suffered raids of up to one thousand aircraft, as did much of the Ruhr industrial basin.

The debate over the strategic value and morality of the bomber offensive will continue on for many years to come, as will the debate over the value of Britain putting so much of its wartime industrial effort into producing large bombers.  However, I will always recall the words of my Dutch wife’s great aunt who died two years ago at the age of 102.  She told me that in the four years before D-Day the sound of the ever-increasing bomber streams passing overhead night after night to strike the Nazis hard gave real hope to the Dutch people that so long as Britain was fighting hard deliverance would one day come from brutal occupation as indeed it did.

Perhaps the greatest tribute we can offer these young men is not just this stunning memorial but the fact that Coventry and Dresden are today twinned in reconciliation.  That atop the rebuilt Frauenkirche in Dresden sits a golden orb from Coventry.  It also places today’s contentions in stark perspective.  Whatever the tensions and irritations of the latest European crisis this is not a war; far from it.  Britain and democratic Germany are today friends and it must always be thus.  Indeed, even if Britain is forced to leave the EU, as I believe in time it will, we will leave as friends.  L.P. Hartley’s famous reminder that the past is another country is nowhere as eloquent as Europe. 

At the base of the memorial I found a note left by a relative.  It commemorates New Zealand brothers John and George Mee who perished on sorties a few months apart.  “As with their comrades they did not seek glory, they asked for no collateral for their lives, they demanded no privileges, no power or influence as they flew steadily into the valley of death”. 

Strike hard, strike sure, Gentlemen.

Julian Lindley-French

Stop Playing Games over Europe, Mr Cameron

Alphen, the Netherlands. 2 July.  In an article yesterday in London's Sunday Telegraph, British Prime Minister David Cameron hinted at a possible in/out referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU.  “Let us start to spell out in more detail the parts of our European engagement we want and those we want to end”, Cameron urged.  Sadly, this is PR Meister Cameron at his smoke and mirrors worst.  Cameron has no intention of putting the question that in recent opinion polls up to 90% of the British people want to answer; should Britain leave the EU?

There was a time when EU membership made strategic sense for Britain.  Not any more; the Eurozone crisis is a tipping point.  EU membership costs Britain £55 million per day ($86m) or £20 billion per year ($31bn), which is over half the UK defence budget, making Britain the second net contributor after Germany for far, far less benefit.  Those politicians who want to lock Britain into an unfavourable relationship with a debt-crushed, economically-sclerotic, growth-free Eurozone (the only EU that matters) claim that should Britain leave the EU the country would lose some 40-50% of its global output.  This is scaremongering.  Britain has an enormous trade deficit with the Eurozone and some 50-60% of Britain’s trade is with the wider more dynamic world.  One only has to visit the UK to see there are few of those beguiling EU signs that one finds all over France and elsewhere celebrating ‘Brussels-funded’ projects; the British are paying for them.

Like much of Britain’s political class David Cameron’s strength is that he is a master political tactician at home, but a hopeless strategist abroad.  Indeed, PR-Meister Cameron’s performance at recent EU summits has been utterly lamentable.  The Sunday Express article reflects this.  It is negotiating madness to say one is going to wait until the Eurozone has decided its future before Britain re-negotiates its membership or indeed its exit.  At the very least Cameron needs to re-negotiate the cost of Britain’s EU membership now.  This is something former Defence Minister Liam Fox has today rightly pointed out. 

There are now only two likely outcomes for this crisis.  There will be either a German-French dominated EU that will use some elements of political union to lock the current balance of power into European law, which is not in Britain's favour.  Or, a move towards genuine political union will take place via fiscal and banking union of the sort favoured by the EU President, Herman van Rompuy.  Both options are utterly irreconcilable with Britain’s political culture. 

In his efforts to dance on the head of a political pin Cameron tries to make the distinction between the Euro-EU and the single-market EU.  That distinction simply does not exist.  Last week’s Van Rompuy plan for banking union shot Cameron’s one remaining fox.  In effect, a two-tier single market in banking is being created; one for the Eurozone and the other for the non-Eurozone.  For Britain a true single market in banking and financial services has been the holy grail for many years.  However, even before the current crisis Germany did everything to block such a market because Berlin and Frankfurt feared the power of the City of London.  Under current plans London would be shut out in favour of Frankfurt, not least because it is the Germans who are going to write the rules of banking union. 

 

One can only hope that behind the scenes there is some method in Cameron's madness.  By calling on the British people to “show tactical and strategic patience” he is maybe hoping to make the case for exit irresistible or at the very least creating negotiating space.  He claims after all to be a “pragmatic euro-sceptic”.  He may also be right.  Indeed, as power shifts away from most (not all) EU member-states to Brussels, and the European people become ever more subject to distant, technocratic unelected fiat, the dangers of political union will become obvious.   

 

Sadly, my bet is that Cameron is mortaging Britain’s strategic future for his own political neck.  By calling for “patience” Cameron’s real concern is to stop votes leaking from his political base to the UK Independence Party and to kick this particular can down the road until after the next election when he hopes that will not have to co-habit with Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, the European Commission’s point man in London.  And, by then the referendum over Scottish independence will have been settled. 

There may be a way for sensible people in London, Berlin and Paris to find a way to make EU membership work again for Britain but it is now very hard to see.  Today the British people pay far too much for far too little in an unbalanced relationship.  That relationship will become set in European political concrete unless Prime Minister Cameron ups his game and begins to exert demonstrable influence over a Brussels run by people who are not natural supporters of the British view of Europe.

Stop playing games over Europe, Mr Cameron.  It is far too serious and your position indefensible.

Julian Lindley-French

Is NATO Deterring Itself?

Rome, Italy. 29 June. Is NATO deterring itself? A two day meeting here in a searingly hot Rome on NATO’s Deterrence and Defence Posture Review (DDPR) reaffirmed to me the deep transatlantic gulf over NATO’s twenty-first century role. Sadly, no answer will be found to NATO’s existential twenty-first century question: is the Alliance integral to America’s world view or merely a group of failing regional actors with whom Americans may from time to time act?

The DDPR concerns the twenty-first century modernisation of NATO’s core Article 5 collective defence, or at least it should if the Alliance knew anything about public diplomacy. DDPR has four elements; nuclear deterrence, missile defence, defence against cyber-attack and the maintenance of a sufficient number of linked up, moveable fighting soldiers to deter or strike back at any aggressor be it a state or a terrorist organisation. There is also a fifth element; arms control and disarmament inserted mainly at the insistence of the Germans to assuage domestic political opinion.

What DDPR actually reveals is the many inherent contradictions within the Alliance that now render weak NATO’s deterrent role. Indeed, far from communicating a sense of real strategic purpose DDPR acts rather like a roll of thick wallpaper designed to cover cracks and holes in a deeply-cratered wall.

At the highest level (what we ‘wonks’ call grand strategy) the friction between the two new blocks that now make up NATO – the Eurozone and the Anglosphere – are plain to see. In the German-led Eurozone strategic truth has now become so toxic that denial and delusion have become the stuff of contemporary politics. Just look to Brussels and today’s latest instalment of the now long-running EU Muppet Show.

The US-led Anglosphere is slowly turning away from continental Europe towards Asia-Pacific. Indeed, last night’s Eurozone decision to begin moves towards a Eurozone-only banking union will in time confirm Britain’s exit from the EU and its re-orientation towards an Anglosphere embedded in the world economy beyond Europe. As the Americans and British shift away from Europe they will leave behind a legacy NATO. DDPR in many ways reflects that; a last ditch offer to modernise the strategic nuclear deterrent and reinforce it with a missile shield in the hope that Continental Europeans modernise their soldiers. They will again be disappointed.

Germany is the critical power. Indeed, the DDPR reeks of German domestic angst. As Germany emerges as Europe’s political and economic pocket superpower Berlin’s influence over the continent will be legitimised by reducing its military power and much of the rest of Europe with it. To Berlin’s mind the Russians must be kept happy at almost any cost even if it effectively gives Moscow a veto over NATO modernisation. And, all matters nuclear are taboo, barring any nuclear role for NATO whilst pretending NATO remains a nuclear alliance. The effect is to increasingly detach NATO from its three nuclear powers – Britain, France and the US.

The other problem is purely bureaucratic. I was attacked at the meeting by some of the DDPR’s drafters for pointing this all out. Their argument was that ‘this was the best we could do given the circumstances’. Well, chaps, in purely strategic terms your work is simply not good enough and the future will confirm that. But, of course, neither politicians nor bureaucrats live in the future. What comes across is a NATO that is becoming increasingly like an ant-hill in which all that matters takes place within the colony with little or no regard for where the colony sits in the bigger strategic picture.

In the old days NATO had a pretty clear idea as to its purpose. In the very British words of NATO’s first Secretary-General Lord Bruce Ismay the Alliance was, “to keep the Germans down, the Americans in and the Russians out”. Today, the Americans are on their way out, the Germans are up but not really in, whilst the Russians are far too far in and want NATO out.

The next five to ten years will see a revolution in the way power is distributed across the world and in Europe. The first lesson taught in Class 101 for strategic dummies is that structure follows power. This is the last chance NATO will be given to prepare for what is very clearly going to be a very bumpy century with much of that friction on Europe’s doorstep. Therefore, like it or not defence cuts in Europe mean nuclear weapons will become more important not less so. Germany and those who want both nuclear disarmament AND deep cuts to conventional forces are destroying the very foundations of a strategic NATO. Worse, such strategic pretence is the appeasement of reality and we all know where that leads.

Lord Bruce Ismay must be rolling in his patrician grave. NATO is deterring itself.

Julian Lindley-French

European Political Union: What Would it Look Like?

Rome, Italy.  25 June. Hot! Cicero, that great defender of the Roman Republic and implacable opponent of those that would abuse power in the name of the people once said, “Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscene than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system”.   The great man’s words seem prophetic as Chancellor Merkel daily calls for “more Europe” whilst daily refusing to pay for it (Germany alone cannot) as Europe’s peoples sit paralysed in the middle of a metaphorical autobahn as an out of control debt juggernaut with 26 steering wheels bears down on them.  So what would a ‘Europe’ with one steering wheel look like?  Is European political union, to given the stated ambition some formality, really possible or desirable?  And, is it at all relevant to today’s emergency?

Think of any federal state; Australia, the US, or more appropriately Germany and you begin to get Merkel’s thinking. Having gone through all the many structural economic financial reforms Germany has set as the price for German support ‘Europe’ in her vision would end up looking pretty much like the Federal Republic.  Specifically, Europe would have a constitution similar to the one (irony of ironies) that was drafted mainly by British lawyers for post-war Germany.  It would be a system of loose federation designed to prevent an over-bearing centre, in which EU member-states would become something like the German Landes themselves based on the old states and kingdoms of the German Confederation prior to Bismarck’s reunification of Germany. 

Brussels (backed of course by Berlin) would be the pivot around which Europe would spin and would over time take on more and more of the attributes of a state. The nation-state is essentially about three things; money, foreigners and killing. In other words - tax, foreign and security and defence policy.  To be fair to Berlin few are thinking in such Realpolitik terms it is simply the logic of the mess Europe is in and what Chancellor Merkel is calling for.  Indeed, the ineptitude of European leaders is really a function of today’s totally unworkable Europe.  Power is like giving birth – one cannot be a little bit pregnant as Europe is today.  Either ‘Europe’ truly integrates or becomes a real inter-state alliance. The strange mix Europe has today is simply confusing and paralysing everybody.

There is of course a big ‘but’ to all of this.  In fact there are several.  First, European political union has nothing to do with this crisis, here right now.  Indeed, it is a distraction from the crafting of the Ten Year Plan for European Recovery that is so desperately needed if the markets are to be reassured. Union might be made closer by the components of such a plan (fiscal union, banking union etc.) but is not the aim of a rescue plan.  Second, whilst some southern European states might be willing to accept economy-saving, democracy-crunching technocratic fiat from Berlin/Brussels because national democracy is a relatively recent phenomenon, northern and western Europeans will most certainly not.  Democracy therein has evolved over many years of political struggle and states such as Britain, France, the Netherlands and the Scandinavians are not going to surrender national democratic sovereignty easily. It is hard to believe either that those in Eastern Europe who gave freedom back to Europe would accept such diktat.

Third, there is no system to afford either credible political legitimacy or effective oversight of such a necessarily remote executive. “Do the math”, as the Americans would say.  Germany has a population of some 81.7 million people served by 622 MPs/Representatives in the Bundestag.  In other words in Germany there is a ratio of 1 MP for every 131350 citizens. The Netherlands enjoys a ratio of 1 MP for every 111337 citizens, whilst Britain has 1 MP for every 96000 citizens.  The EU has a population of 502.5 million very different people served by a European Parliament with 745 members, which affords Europeans 1 Euro MP for every 674,496 very different citizens.  European political union would mean the abandonment of effective democratic oversight.  

The first rule of good strategy is to exclude the irrelevant.  Talk of European political union at this juncture is precisely that; irrelevant.  In any case the most that could possibly be achieved but only after many years is not a federal European state but a confederal state such as Switzerland.  The Swiss are neutral mainly because they agree over very little.  A confederal Europe would make a mockery of suggestions from the likes of Tony Blair (beware he is back and looking for a top European job!) that the reason for more European integration is world power and influence.  Rather, the opposite is likely; a weak Europe with no voice for any voice would offend someone in Europe.

So, Euopean political union would more likely than not lead to a weak Euro-state, with too much power over its citizens and not enough influence in the world.  Is that really such a good idea? 

Julian Lindley-French

Football: The Euro That Works

Alphen, the Netherlands. 22 June. Bill Shankly, the legendary manager of Liverpool FC, once famously said, “Football is not a question of life or death. It is more important than that”. As I sit here in my small Dutch village surrounded by a sea of depressed orange I see his point. The Dutch suffered a premature exit from the Euro 2012 championship so ably hosted by Poland and Ukraine because they were rubbish. No schadenfraude here. Now, before I venture further I must point out to those of you who mistakenly confuse 'football' with that armoured interruption that takes place elsewhere that I am talking of the “beautiful game”, the “world game” in which for a moment an air-filled sphere of plastic becomes the stuff of dreams and nightmares. The footballing gods being the humorous bunch they are have tonight pitted the Germans against the Greeks in the quarter-final. That should prove feisty.

Thankfully for three short weeks Euro 2012 has just about eclipsed Euro trillions down the drain. Most Europeans are agog at the spectacle. Politics is not entirely absent. EU member-states have formally boycotted matches in Ukraine over what they regard as the politically-motivated sentencing of opposition leader Julia Timoshenka.

Something else is also apparent watching the matches; the European nation-state is not only alive and well, it is kicking – literally, metaphorically and politically. The passion of the fans for their national teams might, or at least should, give pause for thought to those Euro-fanatics in Brussels and elsewhere who believe that having caused the current crisis they can now exploit it to move decisively towards the creation of a federal European super-state under the guise of political and monetary union. Believe me, that is precisely what the architects of the appallingly named ‘constructive crisis theory’ believe.

The lesson that Euro 2012 should finally bring home to the Euro-Aristocracy is one which should have been learnt in referendum after referendum; that for the massive majority of Europeans their nation-state comes first. Therefore, any European structures should support the state not seek to supplant it. This does not make those of us who place our country before ‘Europe’ anti-European, although it does make us implacable opponents of the anti-democratic impulses of those seeking to impose the Brusselsisation of Europe.

“Do the Europeans Still Believe in the EU?” a fascinating recent survey of public attitudes for Notre Europe by Daniel Debomy underlines that simple but critical political truth. Belief in the EU has declined but still some fifty per cent of respondents see membership of the EU as positive. Fifty per cent of course do not, but only one in five of that group see EU membership as actively negative, although one in three do not believe their country has benefitted from EU membership. In spite of the Euro-crisis this is not the worst crisis in public perceptions which was 1997 when the Euro-Aristocracy tried to foist an unwanted European ‘constitution’ on the people – which is telling in its own right. However, the survey marks an ongoing and “significant” decrease in what it calls “Euroenthusiasm” which pre-dates the current crisis.

Interestingly the Europeans that are most negative are not only the usual suspects (the British followed by the Austrians) but implies that the French and Germans are also becoming increasingly sceptical. Interestingly the survey suggests that the Benelux countries (and strangely Denmark) are amongst the “most accommodating” which does not match opinion polls here in the Netherlands in which there is a distinctly Euro-sceptic chill in the political air these days.

A key point the survey makes is that “Europe in the making is still of course perceived through national prisms”. In other words Europeans’ views of Europe are still shaped mainly by their concerns about national politics. It also highlights something obvious to anyone watching Euro 2012; all politics in Europe that matters remains decidedly national and any attempt to create more distance between the governing and governed will be strongly resisted by the people.

This critical question of political legitimacy really ought to be at the top of the agenda of today’s Rome meeting of the leaders of the four biggest Eurozone members, France, Germany, Italy and Spain together with the “gang of four” charged with opening the way towards fully monetary and in time political union; Barosso, Junker, Draghi and Van Rompuy. Sadly, I suspect it will not be.

The survey finishes with a warning. “The Europe to which its citizens aspire remains a Europe inspired by the value of solidarity". I can buy that.  "But it has lost some of its visibility; it must reaffirm itself as such, without which the present ‘Eurogloom’ could transform into strong and long-lasting disillusionment”.

As for the football as a seasoned commentator and analyst I will of course maintain a professional detachment from such sporting trifles.

COME ON ENGLAND!!!!!!!!!

Julian Lindley-French

The Euro End Game Begins

A very worried EU citizen and Euro saver somewhere in the Netherlands. 20 June. It is beginning. The Euro end game is upon us. Last night President Hollande said at the G-Empty summit in Los Cabos that the bail-out fund should be used to ease the cost of Spanish and Italian borrowing. This is leader-speak for telling us all that the contagion that started with Greece and spread to Spain has now reached Italy.

Yesterday, European Commission President, Manuel Barosso, told a Canadian member of the Press that he did not need lessons in either democracy or how to handle the economy. Evidence would suggest that he needs lessons in both and might also consider turning up for an ethics class on humility. Indeed, the most laughable part of Barosso’s statement in Los Cabos was to suggest the European Commission is “transparent”. The Commission makes Cardinal Richelieu look like a Freedom of Information commissioner.

The simple, sad fact is there is now nothing to support the Euro but smoke and mirrors. And, whilst some structural economic reforms are beginning in southern European countries they are nothing like deep enough and fast enough to reassure the all-important bond markets. Spain yesterday just about succeeded in selling more than €3bn of treasury bonds at an inflated price simply to meet the interest payments on its national debt. In other words more debt is now being used to fund greater debt, and we all know where that leads.

What Barosso’s comment reveals is four sad truths. First, the President of the European Commission refuses to face reality. Second, the crisis has exposed the innate structural flaws of the Euro and the debt-craziness of many European governments. Third, that Barosso and the other cosseted, unelected members of the Euro-Aristocracy get very irritable when members of the peasantry ask them perfectly reasonable questions. Finally, and most shocking, there is no master plan to prevent this crisis turning into a disaster.

The so-called ‘Gang of Four’ charged with coming up with a ‘plan’ hardly inspire the vital confidence – be it in the markets or me. Barosso is there, along with EU ‘President’ Herman Van Rompuy, Luxembourg PM and Euro-fanatic Jan-Claude Juncker, who is also head of the Eurogroup, and European Central Bank President Mario Draghi. Between them they have the electoral mandate the equivalent of a small English town, but are effectively crafting Europe’s future. This will include fiscal and banking union and no doubt some steps towards an anti-democratic political union – something a range of recent polls has shown a majority of European citizens now to be against. Even if one agrees with such steps it will all be far too late to influence this crisis.

The real power brokers are of course utterly divided. Chancellor Merkel seems to be prepared to invest in a firewall but only one that surrounds Germany. Fat chance. President Hollande is discovering that the next and catastrophic debt storm will hit France. Prime Minister Cameron is a bit-part player of a bit-part EU country who preens and postures but who has next to no influence. He even had to take Norwegian PM Stoltenburg to a recent Berlin-meeting with Chancellor Merkel just to get in the door. How humiliating is that?

To get a handle on the scale of the disaster confronting Europe (and increasingly the rest of the world) I spoke yesterday with a Swiss banker friend of mine. His opening line was sobering. The bail out of Spain and Italy would alone cost some €800bn or the equivalent of all the American debt China has bought over the past twenty years. Add the loss of Spanish and Italian contributions to the bail-out mechanisms and the total is in fact €980bn, the cost of which which will fall mainly on the northern European taxpayer. The Spanish banking sector alone needs at least €400bn at least just to stay afloat, not the €100bn given away without strings at the behest of Mario Draghi (a very dangerous precedent if ever there was one). The €700bn that makes up the European Financial Stability Fund and the European Stability Mechanism is effectively spoken for to cover Greece (which makes President Hollande’s Los Cabos claim somewhat academic).

My Swiss friend told me the first sign of real failure will be a banking collapse that cannot be contained. Once the banks begin to go sovereign debt will explode and after panic bank nationalisation across Europe sovereign debt defaults will follow and the mother of all financial crises will ripple round the world.

The blame game is already underway. That is what politicians do when the extent of their failings is about to be exposed. Last week’s lame claim by Chancellor Merkel that she is not a “miracle worker” merely mirrored Baroso’s ‘nothing to do with us, guv’ Los Cabos comment.

Have a nice day!

Julian Lindley-French

The Anglosphere: Two Hundred Years On

Alphen, the Netherlands, not far from Waterloo. June 18. Two hundred years ago today US President James Madison declared war on the British Empire and the War of 1812 began. The war can be thus summarised; the British became ever so slightly miffed at repeated American attempts to interfere in British Canada, especially as London was in the process of casting a certain vertically-challenged Corsican into history and eventually packing him off to see out his days on ‘one of our islands’ in the South Atlantic.

As a way of drawing London’s irritation to American attention the Royal Navy began to put what the Americans called a navy in its place. Eventually, the British had to burn down the White House, making them ever so popular in the Mid-West, to teach the Americans a lesson about strategic etiquette and London and Washington lived happily ever after. The Anglosphere was thus born. And, apart from the odd bit of tiresome American behaviour, the Anglosphere has not only survived but flourished with the American and British empires now united in common purpose.

What of the Anglosphere today? Nominally, it is comprised of America, Australia, Britain and Canada, with a few hangers-on such as New Zealand and could in time extend informally to the likes of India and South Africa and maybe a few others. In other words it comprises the remnants of a new long dead empire. Is it really a political and strategic option for the states concerned?

The Americans are not the power they were and will need like-minded allies in the twenty-first century as their power and influence begins to wane. The British, who had their last superpower day on 6 June, 1944, are led by people who by and large do not believe in Britain or its people and who have done very nicely thank you very much out of the EU gravy train whilst handing over much of Britain’s national sovereignty to it for little in return. However, in as much as the strategically-illiterate and inept Westminster Village ‘thinks’ big about anything these days, even they might be just beginning to realise that Athens has more influence over ‘Europe’ than London. Tying Britain’s future to a Euro-infected EU over which it has no influence whatsoever is thus the political equivalent of escaping the doomed Titanic in a lifeboat and then deciding that the safest and only course of action is to tie said lifeboat to the sinking wreck. Australia, and the other Asia-Pacific ‘members’, is only attracted to the Anglosphere as a form of insurance policy against a potentially strategically volatile China. Canada? Well, look at a map.

Equally, no-one should be under any illusions how difficult it would be to make the Anglosphere work. The Americans would see it only as a grouping that could add some political legitimacy and minor military capability to ease their strategic over-stretch as they ‘pivot’ towards Asia-Pacific. If NATO is not politically and militarily reinvested continental Europe will be effectively lost to the Americans as a meaningful group of political and military allies. The British who are calling for it tend to come from the ‘anything but Brussels’ wing of the Conservative Party. Swapping dependence on an illiberal, undemocratic bureaucracy in Brussels for dependence on a dangerously dysfunctional Washington prompts one to suggest beware what you wish for. Australia simply wants reassurance that the future in Asia-Pacific will not be exclusively Chinese. Canada? Well, look at a map.

For all that the Anglosphere may slowly and informally emerge as a forum of strategic influence much like, albeit more effective than, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) which is fast becoming the home of the strategic anti-West. Indeed, as power becomes more instable in the world it is also becoming more informal.

The advantage of the Anglosphere over the SCO is that its foundation would be the shared economic and financial model which constitutes the real Special Relationship and, of course, a similar world and cultural view. However, it would probably never amount to more than that.

On June 18, 1815 the Duke of Wellington gave the ever tiresome and uppity French a sound thrashing in a field just off the main E19 Brussels-Mons highway in what regrettably later became Belgium. Wellington’s victory confirmed Britain as the world’s superpower for a century. Paradoxically, the Americans also confirmed Britain’s supremacy. In 1823 the US announced the Monroe Doctrine which stated that any further European attempts to colonize North or South America would be seen as act of aggression. On the face of it Washington’s move seemed a distinctly anti-British move. In fact, it protected Britain’s strategic flank to the west and enabled the British to look south and east with confidence and thus the second British Empire was born.

As for the Anglosphere the first step would be for Her Majesty the Queen to offer the Americans membership of the Commonwealth…if they can learn to behave. If not we British could always burn the White House down again. Just look at a map.

Julian Lindley-French

The Day of Russia or the Day of the Kremlin?

Alphen, the Netherlands. 12 June. Today is the Day of Russia. It marks the moment in 1992 when the Declaration on Russian National Sovereignty was adopted by the Russian Parliament and Russia re-emerged from the wreckage of the Soviet Union. Back then there was much hope both in Russia and the rest of the free world that this enormous, great country would take its place amongst the true democracies of the world. Last week the Russian Parliament confirmed a Kremlin-inspired bill which would increase the maximum fines for breaking laws governing protests by 600% for participants and 1200% for organisers. Yesterday police raided the homes of opposition leaders and removed computers and mobile phones.

It is not just the Russian people who are feeling the iron fist of President-for-Life Putin’s Kremlin. Indeed, the Kremlin's foreign and domestic policies are two sides of the same coin.  Last week Moscow announced that it was reopening three Arctic bases that were mothballed at the end of the Cold War to expand Russia’s military presence in the energy-rich High North. Prior to his re-election then Prime Minister Putin announced a doubling of the Russian defence equipment budget over the next ten years, at a time when the US military faces large defence cuts and European militaries are in meltdown.

Two things are happening. First, the Kremlin is moving to entrench power in the tiny elite that run Russia’s so-called ‘sovereign democracy’. Second, the Kremlin is seeking to mask its assault on Russia’s putative democracy by wrapping itself in the Russian flag. This might appal the sophisticated Muscovites who lead the opposition to President Putin but will doubtless appeal to millions of ordinary Russians who understandably equate ‘democracy’ with the chaos of the 1990s and the corruption of the oligarchs. Order and stability are much cherished in Mother Russia.

June also marks the anniversary of Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union which saw some 23 million Russians perish in the Great Patriotic War and Soviet Russia’s defeat of Nazi Germany. In effect, President Putin is slowly re-inventing Soviet foreign policy albeit somewhat more modestly, with opportunism the central theme.

At one level the Kremlin has the West exactly where it wants it. The Eurozone crisis is rendering the European Union and many of its member-states utterly impotent. Moscow’s only interest in the suffering of the Syrian people is to remind the West that Russia is a player in the Middle East and block any action that it deems injurious to Moscow’s influence. The Kremlin is trying to build an anti-Western alliance with China through the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation and given the need for NATO to re-supply its forces through Russia has the West by the throat over Afghanistan. A divided NATO is also permitting Russia to prevent the much-needed modernisation of the Alliance’s collective defence (although the NATO nations do not need much encouragement).

So, is Moscow winning? Well, no. Although the turmoil of the 1990s seems to be over with mortality rates and life expectancy showing signs of recovery from the dark days of the mid-1990s Russia remains a deeply divided and impoverished society. Moreover, the economy remains dangerously unreformed and dependent on the export of hydro-carbons to fund much of public expenditure which is again growing as the Kremlin re-establishes a system of political patronage not dissimilar to that of the Soviet Union. The irony is that Russian income stems from the very Western economies which the Kremlin continues to insist pose the greatest threat to Mother Russia. Indeed, Russia’s economy is utterly dependent on the West which explains the Kremlin’s use of Gazprom as a front to seek control over critical European economic assets.

This is but one of many paradoxes in the Kremlin’s foreign and security policy that demonstrate the tension between analysis and policy in Moscow. The threat posed to Russia’s Far East by Chinese economic and growing military power is growing. Russia may welcome the humiliation of the West in Afghanistan but it could be left with an even greater Islamist threat to its southern republics. Russia claims to seek a stable Europe and yet moves mobile Iskander M nuclear missiles within range of the High North. Russia seeks a strong relationship with the United States and yet remains an utterly implacable opponent to any Washington-inspired move in the UN Security Council to end the strife in Syria, or indeed Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Some years ago I found myself sitting opposite the Russian Deputy Defence Minister at a NATO-sponsored meeting in southern Germany. Being me I asked the Minister if Russia was a partner in European security or a threat to it. She looked at me quizzically after the interpreter had spluttered and then translated my question. Russia, she said euphemistically, would always have its own interests.

The Kremlin is once again using ‘Russia’ to play its convoluted and complex power games in the name of the state. It all feels terribly Soviet and one can almost see again those old, grey men with their old, grey faces in their expensive furry 'ushankas' standing atop Lenin’s tomb celebrating Soviet military might with their wooden-armed salutes. There was much talk of ‘reset’ recently. Until there is a ‘reset’ in the Kremlin’s old-fashioned thinking expect a difficult time.

The Day of the Kremlin is back.

Julian Lindley-French

Have the British Armed Forces Met Their Waterloo?

Alphen, the Netherlands. 8 June. Winston Churchill once lamented the “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." Reading the speech of British Defence Minister Philip Hammond yesterday to the RUSI Land Warfare Conference I was tempted to say here we go again.

These were the words of a minister given the almost impossible mission to cut the British armed forces irrespective of the changing world beyond Britain’s shores. And yes, the very real danger exists that Britain will compound the profound loss of influence of late in Europe by in effect sacrificing the one tool that gives Britain real influence in the world – the British armed forces.

Now, it would be easy for me to jump on the bandwagon of criticism I can see rolling towards London. In fact Future Force 2020 and Army 2020 might just strike a much-needed balance between strategy, capability and austerity; if that is the politicians hold their nerve and do not again raid the defence budget simply to satisfy the latest adverse press headlines.

Specifically, come the 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review Britain must re-commit to three simple defence strategic principles; sufficient military power to influence a changing US defence strategy, the absolute maintenance of Britain’s position as Europe’s leading military power and the use of military excellence to form strategic partnerships with key Commonwealth partners in and around Asia-Pacific.

Whilst the Hammond speech was couched in the ‘we only recognise as much threat as we can afford’ language so-beloved of this government there was much to commend it. The speech talked of facing the future with adaptable armed forces as part of a ‘Whole Force Concept’ that better integrates regular and reserve forces. This is common sense. However, what the speech lacked was a coherent statement of defence strategy that would provide context. Where is the vision, the level of ambition?

At the politico-military level such strategy would recognise that the shift in US strategy from a land-centric, regional focus to a maritime centric global remit has profound implications for Britain. The ability to work with European allies whilst important offers no alternative to a close defence relationship with the US. The imbalance of effort in Afghanistan demonstrates that under no circumstances should Britain allow itself to become reliant on European allies for effective operations simply to balance the books at home. That would render Britain utterly impotent both politically and militarily.

At the military-strategic level what is needed is a Total Force Concept in which no single service owns land, sea or air. That in turn would require a new vision of military ‘jointness’ to re-establish Britain as a defence radical at the core of a hub of military excellence that preserves and enhances Britain’s ability to lead what might best be termed ‘junior coalitions’, i.e. those that do not involve the Americans.

Here’s the rub; the Royal Navy, Army and the Royal Air Force are developing all the components necessary for the strategic renovation of Britain’s post-Afghanistan armed forces. The Royal Navy’s two super-carriers will afford the British armed forces vital strategic projection for much of this century and help re-cement critical strategic partnerships with the likes of Australia, India and South Africa with whom Britain shares a military heritage. The new Astute nuclear submarines and Type-45 destroyers will enable Britain either to support the US or act as the core of future task forces and battle groups. The RAF’s emerging strategic lift capability will reinforce the strategic reach and re-supply Britain and its allies will need, although important gaps will need to be plugged in command and control capabilities, air-to-ground surveillance and maritime protection. Even though the Army will be reduced from 104,000 to 82,000 by 2020 if the future force is comprised of cutting-edge regiments that can provide the core of a rapidly expandable force that employs properly trained reserves then Britain will be well-served by these reforms.

That is the good news. If, however, Hammond’s speech was simply a return to the hollowed-out force that emerged from the Front-Line First reforms of the 1990s and which were found out by the 2003 Gulf War then Britain’s ability to influence both allies and environments will be nil. Greater reliance on reserves and the private sector for support must mean just that, not the creation of mythical structures that again fail Britain’s young people in uniform when the crunch comes, as it will.

My bet is that Future Force 2020 is too ambitious a target for this strategy-free government. In reality it will be 2025 or even 2030 before all the components are in place and Britain’s armed forces can again play their full role in the defence of Britain’s vital interests in the big twenty-first century. Moreover, there is a very real danger that the corporate memory of recent operations (a key British advantage) will be lost if a more systematic effort is not made to preserve them.

The British armed forces are a strategic brand and to destroy that brand in the name of the here and now would be a mistake that would set Churchill spinning in his grave.

Have the British Armed Forces met their Waterloo? No, not yet, but...

Julian Lindley-French

Montenegro: Why We Must Keep the Door Open

Budva, Montenegro. 7 June. Graham Greene once wrote, “There is always one moment when the door opens and lets the future in”. Here in beautiful Budva the Adriatic laps gently on the beach below my balcony and then stretches away like a carpet of crushed opal with the sun leaping from shard to shard. I have just spent the past two days at the excellent ‘2BS’ (To Be Secure) conference as a guest of the Atlantic Council of Montenegro along with ministers and leaders from across the Western Balkans. In the wake of NATO’s Chicago summit the most profound of questions has hung in the air; will the Western Balkans be given sanctuary within NATO and eventually the EU before the region slides back into dangerous instability?

It is all too easy to slot the Western Balkans into the ‘job done’ box of what now seems an endless conveyor belt of crises. That would be a mistake. As I write the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation has just concluded with China, Russia (and observer Iran) warning the West to keep its hands off the Syrian tragedy just as another massacre is denied by Assad and his cronies. Closer to home Prime Minister Cameron is meeting Chancellor Merkel to discuss the Eurozone crisis and Spain’s imminent banking crash.

At Chicago the one commitment of any substance was the determination to move rapidly towards NATO membership for at least three of the successor states of Yugoslavia; Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia ('Former Yugoslav Republic thereof to keep you Greeks out there happy, although the argument over a name demonstrates the pettiness of many Balkan contentions) and Montenegro. Serbia is of course key to stability in the region and unless Belgrade is happy (something Serbs tend to find hard) the Western Balkans will never be truly stable. 

However, incorporating countries from the region will not come without cost. First, the western Balkans will need financial support for many years to come at a time when most of Europe is mired in dangerous debt. Second, the region still faces a profound challenge from organised crime that too often spills over to blight the rest of Europe. Third, Russia is still prickly about aspirations from countries in the region to join NATO in particular. Fourth, several of the causes of past conflict remain not only unresolved but bubble just below a dormant political volcano that is by no means extinct – Republika Srpska remains unreconciled with Bosnia-Herzegovina and the relationship between Serbia and Kosovo is always a flashpoint. As one senior Montenegran said to me, “true peace will take generations to achieve”.

The bottom-line is this; on balance (and international politics is always ‘on balance’) I have been convinced that NATO’s Open Door must be honoured and quickly. Indeed, with Greece facing possible exit from the Euro there is a very real chance that the instability traditionally associated with this region will spread across the rest of the Balkans. Above all, with Syria burning what hope can we in Europe possibly offer those struggling for the respect of human rights in North Africa, the Middle East or elsewhere if we cannot guarantee stability in this corner of Europe?

There is no question that the Eurozone crisis represents the greatest security threat of the age with Iranian nukes not far behind. However, the danger that the Western Balkans slides back towards war is also very real posing a threat to the stability of Europe at a time of particular instability. The Western Balkans cannot be brushed under some metaphorical (and mythical) security carpet by capitals otherwise engaged.

The next NATO enlargement will take the Alliance into the heart of Balkan instability and must therefore be a model enlargement. Montenegro is small enough and committed enough to make that embrace work. With a population of only 650,000 and having adopted the Euro as the national currency there is no duplicity – either open or subtle – about Montenegro’s ambitions and leanings. Be it security sector reform or democratic control over armed forces Montenegro can show the way for much of the rest of the Western Balkans so that Europe is never again blighted by the obscenity that was the War of Yugoslav Succession in the 1990s.

Europe will not be able to do it alone and the open support of the United States at this conference in the elegant and impressive shape of the US Ambassador Sue Brown was both welcome and necessary. For all the talk of America’s ‘pivot’ to Asia-Pacific it is clear Washington is committed to the Western Balkans and will need to remain so.

Graham Greene was right; this is indeed the moment when NATO’s open door can shine a light on a Balkan future that offers hope not just in Europe but much of the world beyond. In time another door might lead into the EU. Montenegro holds a mirror up to us all and the image I see is not a pretty one.

We must not close the door on Montenegro.

Julian Lindley-French

A Light in the Mire

Alphen, the Netherlands, 3 June. Edward Gibbon, in his masterly Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire wrote ,“all that is human must retrograde if it does not advance”. Having just come back from a two day NATO meeting in the Eternal City one is beginning to see that in the fabric of the people and the place. The fear and frustration is almost palpable. “Why don’t they do something?”, one Roman friend said to me looking skyward to imply a vague vision of our Dear Leaders as Roman Gods. “They are doing something”, I replied. “They are re-arranging deckchairs on the Titanic”. And, if he listened ever so carefully he might hear something else; the acoustic perfume of a distant violin wafting its way from nearby Anzio as Nero fiddles anew.

Our absent without leave leaders last week missed yet another chance to put in place the ten year, multi-billion Euro grand plan that might, just might, save the benighted single currency and stave off not just financial meltdown but save European democracy from those who would rent it asunder in the name of European political union. Even that consummate Euro-Aristocrat, Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank, this week warned that the Euro is fast becoming unsustainable in the absence of decisive action. The markets of course crashed…again!

Crises being like London buses they never come in ones. The US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta suggested in Singapore that by 2020 some 60% of the US Navy will be in the Pacific. What he was saying to all intents and purpose was that America is fast giving up on NATO, the implication being that Europeans are too. I wonder. Asia-Pacific might be ‘where it is at’ in grand strategy these days but as my close friend and former US Ambassador to NATO Robert Hunter rightly points out; the great tectonic fissures of grand political friction will still be found for the foreseeable future on the shores of a powerless Europe in North Africa and the Middle East.

And yet there was a light in the mire this week. There is a famous painting by Canaletto of the Royal Thames Pageant of 1662. At the time Charles II was only two years into his reign and England was slowly recovering from the civil war and Cromwell’s Republic. Charles wanted to show both the majesty and the continuity of monarchy.

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II also went afloat this week.  She has afforded Britain both majesty and continuity during the momentous and revolutionary change that has taken place in the sixty years of her reign which the Diamond Jubilee is celebrating. At times ‘majesty’ has seemed at odds with a Britain in steep decline but precisely because of her sense of duty the Queen has done great service to both her country and much of the world beyond. However, it was not Her Majesty alone that warmed my heart but rather the sight of newly-arrived immigrants and refugees taking the chance to celebrate all things British.

Regular followers of this blog will know my concerns about the impact of hyper-imigration on British society and, in particular, English culture. The political left, which hates all things English, has tried to destroy Englishness through immigration-fuelled multiculturalism, and have by and large succeeded. The political right has used immigration as a way to impose ‘labour market flexibility’ and thus drive down the living standards of ordinary Britons in the name of ‘competitiveness’.

However, the sight of so many immigrants so keen to celebrate Britishness on the occasion of the Pageant gives me hope that one day a new society will emerge that sees itself as being British albeit in a very new kind of way. For that I offer them my heartfelt thanks as they might be shining a light on a future for all.

Contrast change in Britain with change in Europe, and I am now convinced more than ever that Britain and Europe are no longer the same. Behind the Eurozone crisis lurks an enormous EU-British crisis. Europe has no equivalent of the Queen, unless you count that nice Belgian, Mr Rompuy. There is no anchor of stability for Europeans to look to as Europe embarks on what in the next decade will be momentous change. Rather, there is a bunch of uncertain politicians all of whom lack the greatness the moment demands and who are utterly unable to see or grasp the bigger picture which is painting not only their respective destinies but those of their peoples.

My Roman friend also asked me if ‘Europe’ could really collapse. Yes, I said, it could all too easily collapse, because what the Euro crisis has shown is that 'Europe' does not really exist.  Perhaps we need a new 'Europe'.  Any ideas?

By the way it rained on the Queen. Tradition matters.

Julian Lindley-French