Why Do We Need Armies?

Amsterdam, 11 October.  The Duke of Wellington, he of Waterloo fame, once said “I mistrust the judgement of every man in a case in which his own wishes are concerned”.  I have just had the honour these two days past to chair an excellent conference here in Amsterdam entitled “Future Land Forces”.  What made it particularly interesting is that I learnt a lot from a lot of excellent people.  Professors are like generals in many ways, put a title in front of a name that is longer than six letters and suddenly they think they know everything.  The best (and I am most certainly not claiming that for myself) understand that to stop learning is to fail.

As ever I was robust in my chairmanship.  I pointed out to the assembled military and civilian great and good that I had a Wellingtonian distaste for the endless battle between armies, navies and air forces over who gets the most of an ever-shrinking pot of my taxpayer’s money.  Indeed, I find the whole inter-service bickering not only utterly misplaced these days but downright irritating.  In future no-one can afford to “own” (in military-speak) land, sea or air.  That is why I asked the conference to answer a question; why do we need armies?  In future 'we' will 'it' do all from the air, n'est ce pas?  

Two things stood out. First, the vital role smaller militaries such as the Dutch have to play.  The Dutch have their foibles (I know I am married to one), not least a tendency to lecture the rest of us about how to do the things they are not doing better.  However, they lack that mixture of hubris, narrowness vision and a lack of means from which Britain too often suffers.  It is pressure that encourages a delusion that one can go on maintaining the same level of strategic and military ambition however small budget cuts render the force.  I hear a lot these days in the stratosphere of self-interested politicians about doing more with less. From my experience one tends to do less with less.  Because the painfully pragmatic Dutch military have absolutely no delusions of grandeur they are in a very good position to see the world as it is.  Unless the rest of us properly re-balance strategy with capability at some point it will lead to disaster.  For the Dutch it is only a shame their politicians are so weak in matters strategic. 

The second wake-up call was an excellent presentation by a Brazilian general.  Talk about the changing of the guard.  The General wanted to share a problem with us.  How does one manage seven “strategic projects” at once?  Amongst the Europeans in the audience there was an audible “what?”  It is at moments like these that one sees the shift in the global balance of power in practice and one glimpses the complex and multipolar future that awaits us all.  If the Brazilian military are anything like their soccer team then we should all seek membership of Mercosur.

There were of course some serious take-aways from the conference.  Critical innovation does not have to be expensive and should be focused on the soldier and his/her needs.  All armies are looking at how to develop best practice throughout the ‘business’ but they are still not very good at sharing their thoughts with friends and allies.  Indeed, they are still by and large far too conservative for the age in which we live.  Military education is vital right up the command chain but what is on offer these days from we academics is by and large woefully inadequate.  And, in the absence of big enemies (apart from the wretchedness of austerity) there are no big drivers towards the kind of radical military transformation leading to a truly seamless air, sea and land force within the state and much deeper integration beyond that strategic logic would suggest.  We are all going to have to muddle through but at least we can try and be more intelligent about it.

Wellington was right.  Armies have to stop looking for a battle that suits them and render themselves much fitter for the battles that I genuinely fear lie ahead this century.  And we all must stop recognising only as much threat as we can afford.  Mind you what Old Beaky would have done with an air force is a thought to ponder.  

In the end I got the answer to my question about why we need armies from a recently retired British general and good friend.  “It’s the geography stupid!” he told me, in so many words.  People tend to live there.  

Finally, do not allow the word ‘smart’ anywhere near ‘defence’.  And, if I hear one more officer talk about ‘thinking outside of the box’ I fear I might find myself in one!

PS good news that the BAE-EADS merger has collapsed.  That deal was never going to fly!

Julian Lindley-French

British Aero-Farce

Alphen, Netherlands.  8 October. I have just been listening to Phillip Hammond, the British Secretary-of-State for Defence (Defence Minister), prepare the ground for the forthcoming sell-out of BAE Systems to the French and German-dominated aerospace giant EADS.  With a straight face (he does that well) he said that the Government would be willing to countenance the French and German governments retaining almost 20% of the new company even if the British Government had no such equivalent stake, so long as other "safeguards" were in place.  This is simply another example of a strategically-illiterate British Government once again acting in haste only to repent later at great strategic cost to a woefully-led country.  The thing is Mr Hammond this is not simply another business deal and French and German national interests will not be balanced by institutional shareholders as you imply.  If the British Government does not have the same direct influence over the company as France and Germany then whatever your 'safeguards' over time the new company will serve their interests and not those of Britain.  Period!  By selling out BAE Systems you will risk selling out Britain's future defence.  When are you and your government going to start defending the British national interest rather than trying to flog it to the highest bidder?

Julian  Lindley-French       

Nudger Dave

Alphen, Netherlands.  6 October.  PR-Meister Dave ‘Magna Carta’ Cameron is this week going to address the Conservative Party of which he was once a member at the party conference which starts tomorrow in Birmingham.  As a sweetener he will promise a qualified referendum on Britain’s EU membership some time in 2016 or 2017. It is a promise in which he simply does not believe and has no intention of honouring.   

Whilst Cameron is a consummate tactician he is simply unable or unwilling to see the big picture implications for Britain of what is happening on the European continent. So just at the moment when Britain national strategy faces the most profound choice since World War Two PR-Meister Dave retreats into the meaningless Dave-speak of the tactically-irrelevant.  Number 10 has even come up with a ‘concept’ to justify his alternative to sound national strategy - nudging.  Stop laughing please.

Rather, what passes for Dave strategy these days is the kind of empty gesture politics evident in Dave’s apple-pie and motherhood speech about Britain´s development effort to the UN General Assembly, by which the poor British pay for rich governments elsewhere in the world to ignore their own poor.  This was grand ‘nudging’ at its very worst.  What he failed to mention in his UN gush was that a recent House of Commons report revealed the pitifully weak relationship between British money spent and the change-promoting activism he claims for it.  Much of the money spent being wasted either on countries that do not need it or those that make little or no effort to collect due taxes.  Dave, you see, is all about heat not light.

Sadly, at a time of the most profound shifts in global political plate-tectonics Cameron and his fellow nudgers have privately conceded defeat.  To justify his inability to understand the British national interest and how to defend it above and beyond the noblesse oblige which seems to afflict him and the little aristocratic clique he surrounds himself with Dave has instead bought into the absurd idea that his only real job is to manage Britain’s decline.  Churchill he ain’t.

This is nowhere more apparent than in the proposed takeover by Franco-German defence giant EADS of Britain’s not-quite-so defence giant BAE Systems.  On the face of it Dave’s qualified support for this ‘deal’ is because again he fails to understand the strategic implications.  However, the man is not stupid.  Given that he is about to back himself into a corner over an EU referendum the alternative interpretation is that he needs to drive up the cost of any British departure so high as to intimidate the British people into agreeing to stay within an EU that is today implacably opposed to Britain and its national interests. 

The usual London suspects have of course emerged into the light to argue that a Britain that either seeks to renegotiate its EU membership or leave will be relegated to the second-tier and thus be less able to shape Brussels’ decisions.  It may be news to them but Britain is ALREADY in the second-tier and the EU of today bears little resemblance to the EU Britain ever-wanted.   

A ‘yes to the EU’ vote would also certainly mean that Britain joins the benighted Euro as the middle ground Cameron claims for Britain will simply no longer exist by 2016.  If you will not take my word for it, just look at ‘President’ Van Rompuy Gang of Four Report on the future of European’s money.  

Quite simply, Britain can never and will never be at the heart of THIS Europe.  Instead, if Dave succeeds Britain would be confirmed as a second-class state within the Union and we British condemned to pay for ever more for ever higher EU Commission budgets as massive transfers of ordinary Briton’s hard-earned money are committed to pay for an unaccountable and undemocratic European political monster.  How on Earth can Dave defend that and call himself a British Prime Minister?

Taken together the qualified Cameron offer of a qualified referendum and his qualified support for the takeover of BAE Systems by a company dominated by the French and German governments demonstrates yet again a failure of strategic will, belief and ambition at the top of Britain’s political elite.     

Big British thinking has been decimated by nudgers like Dave because they break the link between strategic cause and desired effect.  Maybe, just maybe, Dave will prove me wrong at his forthcoming speech to the Conservative Party Conference.  Somehow I doubt it and all we will get is more of this nudging nonsense.

Dave also said at the UN he would not preside over any cuts to Britain’s development budget however broke the country may be.  Well, there is an easy solution to that Dave.  Nudge off!

Julian Lindley-French

NATO: All SHAPE and No Arms?

Wilton Park, England.  5 October.  In the 1950s the Americans used to have a NATO joke (they have about one per decade).  NATO, they said, was like the Venus de Milo, all SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe) and no arms.  You are meant to laugh now.  The essential point was that NATO was fast becoming lots of military headquarters with no military forces.  At the time it was but a dream but some sixty years on NATO is indeed lots of military headquarters with few military forces.  Whoever said we Europeans no longer take the long view.  I have just written the report for a big conference on the Alliance entitled “NATO Partnerships in a Shifting Strategic Landscape” and I could not but recall that joke.  In a sense the joke captures NATO’s essential dilemma – as the world gets bigger NATO seems to be making itself smaller.  

It is a contradiction we need to resolve and fast.  Only yesterday a NATO member Turkey shelled Syria.  One of the many problems is that today’s distinction between NATO members and partners is entirely artificial.  Indeed, it is hard to imagine any sizeable NATO operation ever again taking place without partners.  During Operation Unified Protector over Libya there were on occasions as many partner states taking part as members.  And yet, in principle at least, non-participating members had more influence over critical NATO decisions than fully-participating partners.  That is the strategic equivalent of defying political gravity and if it continues poses a greater threat to the future credibility and viability of the Alliance than any perceived failure in Afghanistan. 

Quite simply NATO’s place and utility in a changing world will be defined as much by the strategic partnerships it forges as any internal strategy, however grand sounding its title.  Hitherto, the Alliance’s internal balance has been guaranteed by the essential equation of NATO strategy – the more grand sounding a document the less its actual use.  But that was then and this is now.  Within a decade all strategic relationships will have been transformed by the rise of Asia.  Be it NATO membership and and its now plethora of partnerships they must all be seen in that context, i.e. part of a world-wide web of security partnerships.

Why?  Because NATO’s true utility can only be defined once its place in American grand strategy has been established and that is a-changing.  Especially so as the more the Europeans cut defence the more reliant they are on the US.  Unfortunately, implicit in the ‘pivot’, the ‘rebalancing’, the ‘global Yank’ (shiver) or whatever one wants to call Washington’s potential zweifrontenskreig, a new strategic contract beckons between NATO and its erstwhile member America.  That contract is essentially simple; NATO must take care of security for both members and partners in and around Europe to ease pressure on the US elsewhere. If not the American security guarantee will over time fade.  Of course, the Americans will stay for the big stiff - Iran, but much else will fall to the Europeans.

Given the parlous state of Europe’s armed forces lessening risk will thus mean shifting the balance from collective defence and crisis management to co-operative security and that means partners and partnerships much more tailored to the needs of the individual states critical to Alliance security.  The needs of Finland and Sweden as partners are a world away from the needs of say Egypt, Libya or Saudi Arabia.  

The trouble is that it is bureaucracy and resource-constraint that is driving NATO’s partnership policy, not strategy.  Last year to make things simpler for the NATO-crats a new Partnership Co-operation Menu was offered.  The aim was to centralise the various partnerships into something far more ‘efficient’. In fact, all it did was to paralyse partnership as certain member-states were given yet another opportunity to block Alliance development so that they could pursue their own narrow agendas.  

At the military level such grandstanding is becoming dangerous.  NATO could become a military interoperability school, critical to doing military things together and better and thus supporting the flexible coalitions of both members and partners that are the future for all Alliance military operations.  However, until the essential divide with the Alliance is resolved between NATO globalists and NATO’s little Europeans it is difficult to see the Alliance being anything other than a school for defence scoundrels, who find themselves forever in detention for not having made sufficient effort.  Still, enough about my school days.

Of course NATO has no ambition to be a global Alliance but it still has a critical role to play as a cornerstone institution in the world-wide security web.  For that reason the Alliance must act now to forge the twenty-first century partnerships central to its future credibility. 

If not then NATO will simply become the Venus de Milo’s fat sister – no shape and no arms.

Julian Lindley-French

Poles Apart

Alphen, Netherlands, 28 September.

Dear Mr Sikorski,

I have waited a few days to comment on the speech you made to the Oxford Analytica Global Horizons Conference on 23 September at Blenheim Palace and on your recent piece in The Times about Britain and the EU.  Some would see such comments by a Polish Foreign Minister as gross interference in Britain’s internal affairs, but then we are a tolerant people.  That said I am not so sure you Poles would have appreciated such comments from a British Foreign Secretary.  

Your remarks were clearly less for our benefit and more to do with relations with your President and your Prime Minister, who too often feel the Sikorski foreign policy is not Poland’s foreign policy.  Indeed, my sources tell me that after your recent Berlin speech your Prime Minister took up to three days to approve and the President criticised you for not having consulted more widely before the speech.  Moreover, given your call last year for German leadership I felt I could have been reading a lecture by the German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle about how we British have no alternative.  Maybe that was the point.  

However, out of respect to you as a fellow Oxford man I will limit my comments to your Little Britain speech.  You set out to blind your audience with facts.  You said that British membership of the EU cost a trifling £15 ($24) per British head per year against some £1500 ($2435)-£3500 ($5680) (clearly a scientific figure) of benefits. And, that only one-sixteenth of UK primary legislation stems from EU decisions.  

Let me immediately correct those figures for you.  According to the Office for National Statistics in 2011 the net cost of EU membership for the UK was £10.8bn ($17.5bn).  Some outlier estimates put the gross cost at £65bn ($106bn) per year or £1000 ($1620) per head if one includes the cost of all regulation and transfers plus the £15bn ($24bn) paid annually into the EU budget.   The cost is probably between £400($650) and £440($715) per British household.  The only year the UK was a net beneficiary was in 1977 when a referendum was held on UK membership.  You say that half of Britain’s exports go to the EU.  In fact, the latest figures show that trade with the EU is somewhat less than 50% with a £50bn ($81bn) trade deficit.  

You cited the usual Polish nonsense about ‘betrayal’ in 1939 and in 1945 at Yalta (Britain went to war in 1939 for Poland and if you were betrayed at Yalta it was by mighty Washington and Moscow not by exhausted and marginal London).  And then you went for what you thought was our jugular – the EU single market. You said that the single market was a “British idea”.  Indeed, Britain has been remarkably consistent about this ‘vision’ for Europe.  The British people never signed up for the kind of German-led European super-state you seem to be espousing, although it is hard to understand from your remarks whether you seek an empire or a union as you imply a European balance of power. You might wish to clarify your thinking about just exactly it is that you seek.  You also overlooked the fact that the single market is not, well, single.   Euro-virtuous Germany has consistently and repeatedly blocked the Commission’s Services Directive, where Britain is of course strong.  

Your venture into foreign and security policy was at the very least misplaced.  You say a British commissioner runs “our” diplomatic service.  However, no-one in Britain had ever heard of her before she was appointed and we know even less about her now, but that is hardly your fault.  As for your suggestion that Britain “could, if you only wished, lead Europe’s defence policy” it is, I am sure you will admit, very hard to lead nothing.  And whilst I grant you Poland has marginally increased its defence expenditure to bring at least something to your famed Weimar/Bermuda Triangle, the rest of the EU thinks military power far too messy.  

Quite simply, Mr Sikorski, you have missed the point.  The EUrosphere you are about to take Poland into is a political trap that Britain will never fall into.  We would of course wish you well and we respect Poland’s right to decide its destiny.  Indeed, that is why we fought both World War Two and the Cold War.  However, you of all people should uphold our right to choose our destiny. This may not be what you and Germany clearly want for us, but then we are not you.  There is certainly no reason at all why we could not still be friends, in spite of your thinly-veiled threats to future trade relations.  

Our objection to the Europe you espouse is not because we have delusions of grandeur, even though we have one of the world’s biggest economies, hugely-experienced armed forces and an excellent diplomatic machine, although I grant you our political leadership is not up to much. Rather, the simple EU truth is that on matters of economic and political culture Britain will always be in a minority and forced to accept the ‘diktat’ of what Tocqueville (did you read history at Oxford?) called the tyranny of the majority.  Majorities are not always right.

I hope you find your Brussels job. Perhaps you see yourself as a kid of super-commissioner combining foreign, neighbourhood and aid portfolios.  That is after all what your friend Guido Westerwelle has called for.

Sorry, but we are poles apart.

Yours sincerely,

Julian Lindley-French