Europe's Naked Emperors

Vienna, Austria.  26 September.  Gazing across the vertiginous topography of my Viennese cappuccino as I sit on the terrace of the Palmengarten palaces stretch before me in this most beautiful of cities which adorns the very heart of Europe.  With a loose heritage that dates back to Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire Vienna is the quintessential post-imperial European city.  Now the capital of a small but rich and modern European state it was once the epicentre of a vast multicultural, multi-ethnic empire that collapsed in 1918 under the weight of its own political hollowness.  As a metaphor for modern Europe there can be no better.

Sad though this may be much of my weekend was spent reading and contemplating the Future of Euro-Aristocracy (sorry Future of Europe) Group report compiled by the foreign ministers of Austria, Belgium, Denmark (traitors), France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Spain.  If this was a football/soccer tournament this would be known as the Group of Death because it would be almost impossible to get out of. 

The report establishes the battle-lines between a Europe built around its nation-states and national parliaments, for all its inevitable inefficiencies, and a Europe that replaces rump nation-states with a putative European super-state, for all its inevitable inequities.  The Group choose decisively for the latter.

A not inconsiderable bit of the report I sort of agree with.  That, “the European Union has reached a decisive juncture” cannot be contested.  Their central contention that a Europe of “28 or more” member-states renders the EU less than the sum of its parts, is equally compelling, but only because they are moving the goalposts between structure, power and ambition.  However, thereafter I part company with the ministers because for all their talk of democracy and accountability for them more Europe, means less democracy.  This report is in effect the founding document of the coming Eurosphere and they see themselves as its founding fathers, like Schumann, De Spaak et al before them.

They call for “treaty changes” if needs be to deepen Economic and Monetary Union, ever deeper policy co-ordination between member-states, an effective single ECB supervisory mechanism to oversee the banks and more power for the European Commission with a directly-elected European Commission President (what German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle last week called a European Government).  All this together with a strengthened European (Pretend) Parliament to “ensure full democratic legitimacy and accountability”.  They also call on the EU “to strengthen its act on the world stage” by creating in effect a real EU foreign and security policy, taking the veto (i.e. Britain) out of EU foreign and security policy decision-making and for a new European defence policy, which “could eventually involve a European Army”.   

In short, the Euro-Aristocracy are creating is a political Frankenstein, something Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski rather forgot in an anti-British speech he made in Oxford last week.  We, the citizens?  Last week I was told by a fully paid-up member of the Euro-Aristocracy to shut up. What he painted for me was a picture of my European future.  I was warned for standing in the way of the powerful.  “Yes”, I replied, “because what is happening is so important that we citizens must be heard whether you like it or not”.  He snorted dismissively. Across Europe the same pattern is being repeated.  Civil society is slowly being strangled by the elite as critics are either co-opted, intimidated or both. 

Over coffee I fell into conversation with a Viennese gentleman.  He did not like the idea of a big Europe because he said it reminded Austrians of a very painful past but like millions of his fellow Austrians he felt utterly powerless.  He told me he detested politicians acting in his name when he had no say. He said he also felt grateful to Britain for again standing up to the grand illusion of a European super-state.  Sadly, I did not have the heart to tell him that PR-Meister Cameron and his Lilliputian London Government lack both the vision and the political backbone to stand up for British interests, let alone those of small countries far way about which they know little.   

This report should not be under-estimated.  It is the beginning of a determined campaign by the Euro-core Euro-Aristocracy to drive through the most profound change in political Europe since World War Two.  They will use hook and crook, demanding formal treaty change here bypassing the recalcitrant there, be they concerned citizens such as me, or the soon to be EU-exiting British (or both).  

Given all that Vienna seems an appropriate place to remember the parable of the naked emperor.  Conned into believing he had been given a magic cloak of the finest cloth, the emperor was in fact naked and only he was blind to the fact.  This time it is the emperors who are conning the people.

Julian Lindley-French

BAE Systems: A Deal Too Far

Alphen, Netherlands.  21 September.  Sixty-eight years ago just up the road from here the British 1^st Airborne Division was fighting to the death at Arnhem Bridge – A Bridge Too Far.  Four days before British paratroopers had been dropped behind German lines to capture the bridge over the Rhine which would have opened the door to Germany.  Brilliantly conceived it was an operation that was tragically beyond the capability of the forces asked to carry it out and reflective more of Allied politics than sound strategy.  Much the same can be said of the proposed takeover of British defence contractor BAE Systems by the Franco-German giant EADS – flawed strategy at far too high a price.  

Since last week’s blog I have been digging and it is becoming ever clearer that the British Government is up to its neck in this decision.  Sadly, it is a decision that reveals yet again the complete inability of London to understand let alone craft sound strategy.  London simply does not understand that this takeover will leave the British having to reconcile a defence–strategy embedded in the American-led Anglosphere with a defence-industrial strategy firmly embedded in the coming Eurosphere.  It is at best irresponsibility and at worst strategic negligence that will see Britain and its armed forces paying far too high a price.

Yes, the British defence budget is clearly too small these days to support BAE Systems.  However, why hitch BAE Systems to a European defence market that has fallen some 30% since 2008 and is still falling.  If BAE Systems is looking for increased volumes it should project partner an Asian company where there is double-digit year-on-year defence investment growth.  Or, if it is seeking to be a technology leader it should tie-up with one of the big American contractors as the US is determined maintain its defence-technology lead.  All the British will get from this deal are low volumes and questionable technology at high cost.  All the proposed new company’s shareholders will get are low returns on investment if any at all.

EADS wants BAE Systems because of its reasonably successful American business, but even this strategy is flawed.  The US business exists partly because BAE Systems is seen as a British company.  The moment BAE Systems becomes EADS (in whatever guise the new company adopts) then Washington will downgrade the company’s access to sensitive US defence contracts and technology.

Furthermore, the impact on British technology, industry and of course jobs will be profound to say the least. This Franco-German dominated giant would close down any British facilities which compete with French and German production, no doubt after assurances to the contrary.  In future Britain’s warships, nuclear submarines and warplanes will be designed and built in France, with some metal-bashing sub-assembly plants left in Britain for the sake of political politesse. This is not a rebalancing of Britain’s defence economy this is the eradication of it.  

Having been taken over the board members of both BAE Systems and EADS would make a lot of money, which is clearly helping to drive this deal.  BAE Systems has long got used to hidden subsidies and gross over-payment at the British taxpayer's expense and may see a takeover by EADS as an opportunity to get a kind of European ‘bail out’.   

Sadly, this whole deal reveals yet again the two contending diseases at the heart of government in Britain – short-termism and the enemy within.  There is the sheer strategic incompetence of a government that simply does not understand the difference between value and cost and which now subjects everything (even the defence of the realm) to its endemic short-termism in an increasingly desperate effort to get re-elected.  Second, too many senior civil servants and their political fellow-travellers no longer believe that Britain should have a national interest.  Rather these soft power warriors seek an end to a strong British military because it leads to too many foreign adventures and gets in the way of their 'successful'(not) management of Britain’s decline.  

This is by and large the same Whitehall group that wants to ‘integrate’ Britain into Europe at almost any price – the surrender lobby.  Last Monday the so-called Future of Europe group of foreign ministers met and called not only for an integrated European foreign policy, but also a European Army, supported by an integrated European defence industry.  Coincidence?   

It is time the sovereign power in the land, Parliament, got a grip.  The BAE Systems takeover must be stopped.  Parliament must examine properly the defence-procurement fiasco that has led to this desperate, defence-destroying move, the murky motives and individuals behind it and once and for all hold to proper account an increasingly apathetic British Government.  What hope the 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review?

BAE Systems; a deal too far.

Julian Lindley-French

Resisting Tyranny

Rome, Italy. 18 September.  I am back again in the eternal city - the city which 2100 years ago saw a putative democracy replaced by tyranny in the name of empire.  Being here again in this magnificent Italian capital the many dangers facing Europe and Europeans are brought into sharp focus.  A couple of days ago in Riga I sat down with some very serious, senior Germans to discuss Britain and the EU.  It was a really very important chat with well-meaning German friends who in that wonderfully German way simply could not for the life of them understand why Britain does not get the German ‘vision’ for Europe.  Put simply, for we British the well-intended rush to political union can only end in some form of unintended tyranny.

Only the British seem to understand this.  In a recent YouGov poll over 60% of Britons wanted either much looser ties with the EU, or to leave the EU completely. This contrasted with 62% of Germans who wanted deeper integration, apparently to ensure greater order, and 63% of Italians who wanted a United States of Europe, ostensibly to ensure greater order and more money.   

I tried hard to explain British concerns but with only limited success.  First, the balance between power and democracy is pivotal.  We British have a profound problem with the concentration of too much political power in too few properly accountable hands (never a good idea in Europe).  That is the logical conclusion of the dangerously euphemistic Federation of Nation-States proposed by the European Commission in its efforts to deepen the bureaucratic ‘control’ it already exerts over Europeans.  It is playing its old trick of using crisis to claim more power unto itself in the name of efficiency.  Indeed, give the Commission an inch and it has consistently taken the non-accountable and proverbial power mile. 

Second, fairness is critically important to we British.  Germany has too often talked Europe but meant Germany and does not play by the rules.  Germany has repeatedly blocked the directive on a single market in services simply because the British are far too competitive and vested German interests want protection.   Indeed, Germany has twice as many cases as Britain before the European Court of Justice for breach of European law. 

Third, cost matters.  Britain pays too much and given that Britain has no sense of the ‘Europeanness’ Germans not always convincingly claim to have (a German Europe or a European Germany?) cost matters profoundly to the British.

Fourth, trust is minimal.  After over ten years of British troops doing too much of the dying in Afghanistan compared to caveat-protected fellow Europeans British faith in the reliability of European allies has been deeply undermined, whatever the numbers of troops deployed.  The result is a complete loss of faith in Europeans as reliable defence partners and a re-discovering of a defence Anglosphere.

Finally, I warned my German friends not to take too seriously the ‘do not rock the boat’ assurances of the British Establishment.  London is locked into managing a decline that is not shared by the British people who are prepared to pay a heavy price to protect their ancient liberties from a Brussels juggernaut that has shown scant regard over the years for their interests.  As political union deepens Britain’s politicians will be able to resist calls for action only for so long, whatever the advice of their ‘gone native’ advisors.

Given that can Germany and Britain find common ground?  Maybe.  The formal re-energising of a kind of super-European Free Trade Area (EFTA) with power to oversee the single market but from within the EU framework could perhaps offer a way forward.  It would of course mean Britain would be a half-price, half-member with half-influence (Britain’s reality today) and it would in effect be the mother of all opt-outs.  Still, Britain could content itself that its beloved single market is alive and well and use the political space to work to extend it across the whole of Europe to include Turkey.   Germany could content itself with a leadership job well done and an EU intact.

What is clear is that the status quo ante is no longer an option and even as a half-member Britain would retain profound worries about encroaching tyranny. We British have spent centuries trying to find the right balance between the state and the individual.  Current plans for deeper EU political integration would once and for all destroy that political balance as democracy can only suffer with the concentration of ever more power in the ever fewer hands of the very people who caused this crisis.  Millions of Britons fought to prevent tyranny in Europe and Germany needs to understand that.  .

The British will always resist tyranny however sophisticated its case and how well-crafted its false claims to be the heir of democracy. 

Julian Lindley-French

Can NATO Pass the Riga Test?

Riga, Latvia. 16 September.  The Riga Conference is a jewel in the crown of security conferences.  Yesterday I shared a panel with the Italian, Latvian and Norwegian defence ministers, together with Ambassador Sandy Vershbow, NATO’s US Deputy Secretary-General to discuss “NATO post-Chicago”.  Did something happen in Chicago?  I must have missed it.  The questions at hand were those great oxymorons of NATO speak; ‘smart’ defence (they have a good sense humour in NATO) and NATO enlargement.  Being your faithful and ever heretical Blogonaut I of course ignored all that and asked a more direct question; can NATO pass the Riga test?
 

NATO is a bureaucracy, albeit a bureaucracy with attitude.  In the absence of what was once called ‘leadership’ NATO is forced to search endlessly for a bureaucratic solution to the world by looking at it through the wrong end of a telescope.   Sadly, if the good citizens of Riga are to sleep soundly in their beds NATO’s enforced small thinking will have to change.   Indeed, whilst I remain convinced NATO has and must have a big strategic future the Alliance must first confront a very big present and the most profound and rapid rebalancing of world power ever seen.  In other words, NATO’s post-Afghanistan future is one in which China, Germany, India, Japan and, of course a very near Russia and an over-stretched America tussle to defence influence via soft and hard power.    

Now, let me put aside the coming contest between established superpower America and coming superpower China, which was being enacted out by proxy this week over Rock-all in the East China Sea between Beijing and Tokyo.  Let me focus rather on Europe’s two behemoths Germany and Russia.

 

 

The thing about power is that it is as unforgiving to those that have it as it is to those who do not.  Just across the border from where I am writing an opponent of President Putin has been unceremoniously ejected from the Russian Parliament for being less than helpful to the Kremlin.  It is clear that President Putin’s world view is pretty ‘unreconstructed’ (to use the appalling non-speak of modern European academia).  His world is one in which hard power is used to project soft power into spheres of great power influence and devil take the small-most.

Looking to the West between me and home is mighty Germany. Germany does not feel mighty and it tries very hard not to be ‘mighty’, but at least in European terms ‘mighty’ it is.  And, behind the economic turmoil of the Eurozone crisis is the re-ordering of European power in Germany’s favour.  A British diplomat recently told me an apocryphal story about being virtually pinned against a wall by a German diplomat and told in no uncertain terms that twice before Britain had thwarted Germany’s attempts to ‘integrate’ Europe and it would not happen again.  Said German diplomat is probably right as Germany and France have successfully used the EU to neuter Britain.  Thankfully, there are some very serious Germans thinking very seriously about all of this and trying to find a solution to all of this but Germany is having to learn leadership on the job,  Not easy,.

 

 

And then there are the Americans (Oh! Oh!).  Twenty-first American grand strategy will demand a shift in both ambition and capability by Washington if it is to meet the coming Asia-Pacific challenges to the second American century with profound implications for the security of the honest folk of Riga.

NATO is today the rather slim piece of salami in this very particular power sandwich.  Indeed, Riga is the crucible in which a new Alliance will either be forged or die (and why the next NATO Sec-Gen should perhaps come from the Baltic States).  Or, to put it another way, Riga’s credible defence demands a new strategic bargain between Washington and Berlin and given events elsewhere the possible re-structuring of NATO into the EUrosphere and the defence Anglosphere.

 

 

The alternative is a United States pulled progressively away from the defence of Europe by events elsewhere, a NATO that fades as a result and poor, little Latvia once again trapped between the Russian (planned) and German (not-so-planned) spheres of influence.  History suggests that will not turn out well. Indeed, in the absence of a shared strategic concept with Washington Berlin will be forced to lead Europe towards an autonomous strategic defence.  With Europe’s armed forces about to fall over a defence cliff that would hardly be credible.

The people of Riga need NATO and today NATO just about passes the Riga test.  However, history never stops here and all the NATO allies must never forget that whatever the distractions NATO’s future will be decided not in Brussels or even Afghanistan, but right here in Riga.  Riga cannot be defended by European complacency.

Julian Lindley-French

 

BAE Systems is Selling Britain Down the Euro Drain

Alphen, Netherlands. 13 September.  There is not much these days on the news that makes me sit up and say, “what”?  However, the news that BAE Systems, Britain’s leading defence contractor, is in talks to “merge” with EADS made me sit bolt upright.  The proposed “merger” is nothing of the sort.  It is a straight forward take-over of BAE Systems by the French and Germans who will together own 60% of the new company.  BAE Systems say the imperative is purely business, driven by the massive cuts to the UK defence budget that the British government has foisted on the armed forces.  For the French and Germans the imperative is purely strategic; to make the costs of any future British departure from the EU exorbitantly high and effectively kill at birth any hope of an alternative defence Anglosphere. 

 

A few years ago I would have fully supported such a move.  In November 2010 Britain joined France at the heart of efforts to better integrate the European defence effort.  Falling defence orders and defence cuts were driving up the costs of defence production and with it the cost to the taxpayer of each piece of military kit.  Moreover, with Britain, France and Germany representing 88% of all defence-technological research in Europe merging the efforts of Europe’s prime contractors made for some strategic logic.

 

And then came the Eurozone crisis which has changed all Europe’s strategic and political relationships and shifted Britain from being one of Europe’s big powers to a high-paying, low benefit peripheral irrelevance.  This deal will only make a bad situation worse.  BAE Systems is not any old company. 

 

Therefore, if PR-Meister Cameron has any political and strategic nous at all (and I am really beginning to wonder) he would understand that London needs as much strategic room for manoeuvre as possible.  This is particularly important in the defence realm which for all the damage done by the accountants remains about the only ‘strategic’ card London can play in the re-ordering of European power that is taking place.

 

And yet, the very day European Commission President Manuel Barroso calls for more treaty changes and a federation of European states BAE Systems announces that it is seeking to tie Britain into a political Europe that Britain and the British people want no part of.  The political implications of this move will not have been lost on Paris and Berlin.

 

Furthermore, BAE Systems has spent years making itself a player in the dominant US market.  Not only would such a merger raise profound questions about BAE Systems access to US contracts, be it as a prime contractor or as a partner, the EADS takeover will raise serious doubts in the American mind as to whether Britain can any longer be trusted with sensitive defence-technological information.

 

London is making much about guarantees and ‘golden shares’ but in reality when the takeover is complete Britain will find the defence-industrial tail wagging the defence-strategic dog.  The usual meally-mouthed nonsense has of course been uttered about protecting the national interest.  A spokesman (who are these people?) said, “Given the nature of the companies’ activities we would of course want to ensure that the UK’s public interest was properly protected”.  And yet the Government feels unable to veto this deal as it is purely of a business nature.  It is not! 

 

This is simply another example of an incompetent government that does not understand the strategic implications of its own weakness sacrificing the strategic long-term for the balance-sheet short-term.  Can you imagine a French or German government being as supine?  Absolutely not!

 

By all means deepen defence collaboration BETWEEN BAE Systems and EADS and indeed between Britain, France and Germany, as there is a long and by and large successful history of such joint ventures.  However, to permit Britain’s one true defence prime contractor to be effectively taken over by a company that operates under the edict of two foreign governments who have shown themselves to be less than friendly to Britain of late is utter folly.  Two governments who are spearheading a political venture that is increasingly at odds with Britain’s strategic interest.  When will British governments realise that the job is not to keep foreigners happy, but to stand up for the British people and their strategic interests?

 

London has led Britain into the worse of all Euro-worlds.  The relationship between costs and benefit of EU membership for Britain is already so distorted as to render Brussels an appalling tax on British jobs and society.  Britain gets nothing from the EU; it is about to get even less.

 

BAE Systems is selling Britain down the Euro Drain.  The British Government is letting it happen.  This is a strategic error of the first magnitude - the wrong decision at the wrong time.  Why am I not surprised?

 

Julian Lindley-French

Zombie Europe

Alphen, Netherlands,12 September.  It is election day here in the Netherlands and my Dutch wife has just gone off to exercise her democratic right.  Having watched the campaign on TV I am struck by how small these Dutch politicians are and how little able to grasp the enormity of the events that are engulfing the Dutch people. Only in last night’s TV debate did the issue of Europe and the Euro really ignite. 

 

The simple fact is that my life and that of millions of other Dutch taxpayers is now decided elsewhere often by unelected officials who care little for my well-being and who want only to ‘transfer’ what little money I have to Europe’s super-debtors so they can avoid the consequences of their own actions.  Dutch politicians are not alone in their increasing irrelevance as ever more unaccountable power is passed to European institutions in a desperate bid to save a currency that simply does not work. 

 

It is not without a certain political elegance that the day the Dutch turn out to vote the European Omission is setting out plans for a banking super-regulator to oversee the Eurozone’s six thousand banks as a first step on the road to full banking union and who knows what thereafter.  It will, of course, all be overseen in my name by Mario Draghi – Super Mario – and his increasingly (dangerously) powerful European Central Bank.

 

In the euphemistic language of the Omission banking union is yet another attempt to ‘mutualise’ the debts of the super-debtors.  Or, to be more exact, ‘banking union’ is an indirect way to load the costs onto me for the appalling decisions of appalling politicians over whom I have no influence.  Whether I or other northern, western European taxpayers pay directly or via the banks one thing is clear; sooner or later my little savings will be raided (again) to pay for this mess, be it via tax or currency inflation…or both.

 

Worse, the Omission’s proposed banking union breaks the link between risk and responsibility by making sound northern European banks, such as my own Rabobank, responsible for the bad lending and sovereign debt decisions of all.  This will only encourage the profligacy that created this mess and render less likely vital structural reforms.  There will be rules, I am told, that will ensure the European Stability Mechanism and the European Financial Stability Fund is properly overseen.  However, in reality Super Mario will be in charge and it is clear that he places the interests of his fellow southern Europeans well before my own.   

 

My last formal hope for effective European democratic oversight was also dashed today.  The German Constitutional Court ruled that a permanent European bail out mechanism was legal under the German constitution.  The decision means the ESM and EFSF can now be enshrined in German law and the German government can go on transferring German taxpayer’s money to the super-debtors and by extension my own, as the Netherlands is little more than a German colony administered from Brussels these days. 

 

As of now my last hope rests with the common sense of the German people.  There is a faint hope that German public unease will see demands grow for a referendum in Germany.  This will not happen anytime soon as the way is now clear for the next massive tranche of my money to vanish down the black hole of the super-debtors.  However, when all of this again goes wrong, as it will, I am confident the German people will say “enough”!  And then finally some German common sense will be applied to the appalling tax on my future that the European Onion has become.

 

The sad truth is that the election campaign here in the Netherlands has for the most part been about anything but Europe, even though it is by far the biggest issue facing the Dutch people.  In their collective desperation to hide their impotence Dutch politicians have focused on the tactical rather than the strategic.  Several of them have actually called for more Dutch ‘power’ to be given to ‘Europe’ further undermining any residual value in Dutch democracy.  

 

The Euro-Aristocracy is now well on its way to cementing its power.  How long before free speech becomes the next victim?  Indeed, unelected Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti has already called for a summit on what he calls "populism".

 

The sad truth is that zombie politicians are leading zombie states into an increasingly zombie Europe.  Europe today is full of empty democracies.  

 

Oh how I weep for my democracy.  Oh how I weep for my Europe.

 

Julian Lindley-French

NATO: Raising the Titanic or Lowering the Atlantic?

Alphen, Netherlands. 10 September.  I was back in NATO HQ in Brussels on Friday.  Each time I enter NATO’s sprawling complex I cannot help but think of doomed British film producer Lord Grade.  Having staked his future on one of Hollywood’s great flops, “Raise the Titanic”, he lamented afterwards that it would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic than raise the Titanic.  The eclipsing of the 2010 NATO Strategic Concept by the Eurozone crisis and the pending failure in Afghanistan (for that is what it is) will once again bring sharp focus upon NATO’s now eternal question; what is it for?

 

In fact given Europe’s strategic retreat/pretence the only outstanding issue is the relevance of Europeans to America’s grand strategy.  If none then both NATO and indeed Europe’s future defence will fail.  Last week in Poland I was struck by the self-delusion of many Europeans with regard to this most fundamental of strategic questions.  There was much talk of Europe’s strategic autonomy even as cuts of up to 30% to European defence budgets mean Europe will be more not less reliant on the US for its defence.  Implicit in that reality is another question that Europeans seem almost psychotically determined to avoid; what price an over-stretched America will demand to guarantee the future defence of Europe?

 

The crux of the matter is essentially simple.  If France in particular, aided and abetted inadvertently by the likes of Greece and Turkey, continue to block NATO’s true transformation into a strategic alliance nothing is more certain to guarantee the formation of an Anglosphere beyond the Alliance and with it the demise of the key Franco-British strategic defence partnership.  Indeed, the vain hope by some (it is thankfully only some) in Paris that by stymying NATO somehow an autonomous strategic Europe will be fashioned from the wreckage is profoundly misguided (with genuine respect Paris).

 

The North Atlantic Council has been reduced by this impasse to little more than marking the card of Supreme Allied Commander Admiral Jim Stavridis and his team rather than acting as the font of strategic guidance.  This narrowing of the NAC’s role has not only killed the Strategic Concept but made it impossible for Allied Command Transformation to do its job; transform Alliance militaries.

 

Much will depend on who is appointed the next NATO Secretary-General.  Anders Fogh Rasmussen has brought both strengths and weaknesses to the job.  As a former prime minister he has certainly given the post more influence amongst erstwhile peers but too often he has overplayed his hand and coming from a small country with little influence in the EU his job has been made that much harder.  Possible candidates include Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski, and it is certainly time for a central or eastern European to lead the Alliance.  However, whilst he can be brilliant Sikorski’s ego too often gets in the way of the greater good and he has proven himself no friend of either the US or UK of late.  A Sikorski NATO would be too much about Sikorski and not enough about NATO.

 

Italy’s foreign minister the impressive Franco Frattini is also in the running but making a Rome insider NATO Sec-Gen would hardly instil strategic confidence especially given that the Italians withdrew from operations over Libya because it was costing too much.  In any case Mario Draghi is already at the European Central Bank.  A radical choice would be to appoint someone from the Baltic states who truly understand the meaning of NATO and who is respected on both sides of the Atlantic and in the EU.  Former Latvian defence minister Imants Lietgis would be my choice.  In reality given the strategic challenges faced by the Alliance NATO needs a big political beast from a big European country and that means a Robert Schumann, Manfred Woerner or George Robertson. 

 

Quite simply whoever takes NATO’s helm will need to radically reform an Alliance that is fast becoming a kind of latter day Maginot Line.  Rather, it must become the strategic hub at the heart of a complex web of regional and global partnerships able both to add value to the US and act ‘independently’ (90% of all operations over Libya were US-enabled) when called upon to do so.  NATO sits at the nexus between alliance and coalition in this age or it sits nowhere.  That will mean real defence transformation which for smaller members will mean real defence integration.

 

If NATO is to be finally prepared for its post-Afghanistan, post 911 future it is vital the Alliance as a whole lifts its ‘vision’ from the parochial trench it has dug for itself.  That means a NATO that again raises the Atlantic, the transatlantic, in a century that will be full of icebergs.

 

Julian Lindley-French

 

 

Why Anglo-Polish Relations Need A Reset

Krynica, Poland. 5 September. They call it the ‘Davos of the East’, the Krynica Economic Forum.  It must be a mark of Europe’s desperate economic straits that I have been invited to speak at this huge economics conference.  Thankfully, the question posed by my old friend Andrew Michta, Director of the German Marshall Fund Warsaw was closer to home; what implications does the US ‘pivot’ toward Asia pose for Europe?

 

I shared my panel with a senior British politician who like so many in the British elite seem to have brought into the whole ‘a Britain on the margins of Europe is a Britain lost’ nonsense. Indeed, after this year’s public demonstrations of polite but firm British patriotism it saddens me deeply that a British people who still believe in Britain are led so woefully by an elite who by and large do not.  Talk about lions led by donkeys!

An under-current during my visit here has been the poor state of Anglo-Polish relations.  In the past 24 hours I have heard the following condemnations of Britain and its doings: Britain betrayed Poland in World War Two; Britain is irrelevant (a belief official London seems only too happy to encourage); Britain is being replaced by Poland as a European power.

First, the idea that Britain betrayed Poland in World War Two is not just wrong but plain offensive.  Britain went to war for Poland’s liberty and then fought on at great cost in the Cold War to support Poland in its struggle for freedom.  Yes, the 1945 Yalta Conference abandoned Poland to the Soviets but by then Britain was exhausted militarily and weak politically.  It was Washington and Moscow that were calling the shots so to blame Britain for Yalta is plain wrong.

Second, Britain is irrelevant.  This chimes with the strategic defeatism of so much of the London elite that I can hardly blame Poles for thinking this.  In a sense it is also linked to the third strain of Polish thinking that Warsaw is replacing Britain as a European power.  At one level there is some substance to this view.  Poland wants to join the Euro “when the time is right”, whereas Britain does not.  All the indicators are that Britain is moving inexorably towards an in-out referendum on EU membership, something the Poles would never contemplate given the financial benefits Poland gains from the Union, which of course Britain does not.

However, great country that Poland is some dose of political realism is needed here before Poland makes an historic mistake.  The prevailing assumption, certainly in the Polish Foreign Ministry, seems to be that Poland will emerge to join the Germans and the French in the Eurozone directorate (otherwise known as European political union).  Poland clearly matters.  For example, Warsaw has been instrumental in forming the so-called Weimar Triangle with Germany and France.  However, there is little real substance to this initiative, more Bermuda triangle than Weimar triangle with much talking about improved military capabilities going in but nothing much coming out.  .

Poland is not (yet) Britain.  It lacks the economic and military muscle of even a straitened Britain.  And, influence in Europe (and beyond) will for the foreseeable future continue to be built on those two pillars whether Britain is in the Euro or not.  Poland will thus never replace Britain.  In fact, strategic logic would suggest that France and Germany will never fully admit Poland to the Europe-critical Franco-German axis, just as Berlin and Paris has never and will never admit Britain, even if London signed up to the Euro tomorrow.  Poland and Britain thus need to work closely together.

What is amazing about this amazing country is that in spite of centuries of powerful neighbours trying to destroy it the Poles are still here slugging.   It seems strange then that having fought so hard for its national sovereignty modern Poland seems so keen to sacrifice it in the vague name of ‘Europe’ that could in time further damage the transatlantic relationship   Surely all the lessons of Polish history should be that Poland’s freedom can only be guaranteed by a proper balance between the great powers of Europe.  

As an historian I am deeply conscious of Poland’s suffering.  If any country ‘won’ the Cold War it was Poland.  However, modern Poland needs to put aside its prejudice about Britain and help reset an Anglo-Polish relationship that is as important to Europe’s political stability as ever.  But that begs a further question; why can Poland lay aside its historic prejudice about Germany so easily (which is good to see) and not Britain?  After all it was not we Brits who invaded Poland sixty-three years ago this week!

London and Warsaw need to put this right.

Julian Lindley-French

Afghanistan: An Allotment in a Jungle

Alphen, Netherlands. 31 August, 2012.  Nothing makes my blood boil more than recently retired senior government officials suddenly changing their story once retired.  Earlier this year I was excoriated for suggesting that our troops were dying in Afghanistan for want of a meaningful political strategy and to avoid the political embarrassment of leaders.  Yesterday, Ambassador Sherard Cowper-Coles, London’s former ‘man in Kabul’, went on BBC radio to launch a stinging attack on both the American and British governments.  He said that the undoubted achievements of American, British and other coalition armed forces in denying Afghanistan to Al Qaeda had been wasted due to a lack of a meaningful political strategy built on reconciliation within Afghanistan and a regional political settlement beyond.  Cowper-Coles likened the West’s strategy to “cultivating an allotment (small vegetable garden) in a jungle” and virtually quoted me (unintentionally) when he said that the military surge had failed because it had not been matched by a political surge.

 

This dreadful week in which five Australian soldiers were killed, three of whom died in yet another so-called green-on-blue attack and in which eleven civilians were beheaded by the Taliban in Helmand province, has again highlighted not so much a failing political strategy as the absence of one.  Five years ago I wrote two major reports on Afghanistan following a visit to that beautiful, but broken country and in 2009 I wrote the original “Plan B for Afghanistan” for the International Institute for Strategic Studies (still online).  Plan B highlighted exactly the points that are now being presented as revealed truth by the the so-called great and good as the scramble begins to shift and avoid blame for failure. 

 

Former US Special Envoy the late Richard Holbrooke said that the West was fighting the wrong enemy with the wrong strategy in the wrong country.  Only a proper regional strategy with the stabilization of Pakistan at its centre would have afforded Afghans the semblance of a ‘peace’ beyond the heroin-funded, fundamentalist-driven, tribal-brokered anarchy that is likely to be their future.  Sadly, it is too late now.
 

It is the old quantity versus quality problem.  However large the Afghan National Army or the Afghan police unless and until there is a government in Kabul worthy of the name Western forces are simply preparing Afghanistan for the inevitable civil war that will follow 2014.
 

Sadly, the dishonesty is likely to continue.  Much is made by Washington and London of their continued commitment to Afghanistan post-2014 (other allies are already on their way out).  It is a sham.  I was approached to become a member of a consortium bidding for a contract to provide defence education.  Only after some time did I realise that in fact I was being suckered into a contract to go to Afghanistan post-2014 as a defence-educator simply to maintain the pretence that American and British politicians are keeping their word.  Once the bulk of Western forces withdraw anyone who goes will be little more than hostage-bait.

 

It is patently obvious that both American and British politicians are now more intent in putting distance between themselves and Afghanistan than supporting the troops with real political capital. Indeed, it is striking how the West’s Afghan veterans are fast becoming like those Russians who went home broken in the wake of Moscow's 1989 withdrawal.  Known as The Forgotten Division they have to fight for the most basic of support simply because by existing they remind Russia’s leaders of failure.  Thankfully our veterans are treated far better but for far too long the West’s young men and women in uniform, together with their partners from across the globe, have carried our politicians creating an alibi for appalling leadership. 
 

It is not Ambassador Cowper-Coles who is in my sights as he did indeed try to change things from within.  However, too often those taking the President’s buck or the Queen’s shilling do far too little to shift policy and strategy from within government and are all too quick to attack it having left, especially when there is a book to sell.  It is the mark of the cynicism of both London and Washington these days that careers matter more than honour.
 

It is this behaviour that prevents government from confronting truth and helps politicians avoid uncomfortable truths.  It is compounded by attempts to silence critics who are simply confirming the blindingly obvious; that in the absence of a real and sustained political strategy our young men and women are dying in Afghanistan for nothing and will continue to do so until they are withdrawn in 2014. 
 

Afghanistan is indeed an allotment in a jungle.  Which jungle is a good question - there or here. This blog is dedicated to the five brave Australians killed this week. 

 

Julian Lindley-French