"Let Freedom Live!"

Alphen, Netherlands.  22 February.  Seventy years ago today three young German students were led to a guillotine by the Gestapo in Stadelheim Prison and brutally executed.  Siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst faced death with immense courage, something even the Gestapo acknowledged.  As the blade began its death fall Hans Scholl shouted out “Let Freedom Live!”  With that single act of defiance Hans Scholl created modern, democratic Germany.  

  

The White Rose movement offered peaceful resistance against the Nazis at the height of World War Two.  Centred on the students of Munich University the group’s members understood full well that if caught they would face certain torture and death at the bloody hands of the Gestapo.  And yet between June 1942 and February 1943 they bravely distributed six leaflets and scrawled defiant graffiti denouncing the Nazis.  One of my heroes Helmuth James Graf von Moltke managed to smuggle the sixth and final leaflet out of Germany and in July 1943 the Royal Air Force dropped thousands of them over Germany retitled, “The Manifesto of the Students of Munich”.

One of the leaflets was sadly prophetic, “Isn't it true that every honest German is ashamed of his government these days? Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes– crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure– reach the light of day?”  The White Rose movement clearly knew of the Holocaust and the crimes being committed in the name of Germany at Dachau on Munich’s outskirts.

Germany and its people bear a heavy burden of history.  Clearly the crimes of Nazism must never be forgotten.  Last year I visited Auschwitz and Auschwitz II Birkenau and its evil mark will be with me for the rest of my days.  However, there is also much said and written about modern Germany that not only misses the point but is plainly wrong.  Sadly, that is often the case in Britain my own country which still counts the cost of its heroic defiance of the Nazis in the name of Europe’s freedom (something too often other Europeans seem to forget).

Modern Germany is not the heir of Nazi criminals but the heir of Liselotte Bendl, Harold Dohrn, Manfred Eickemeyer, Wilhelm Geyer, Willi Graf, Eugen Grimminger, Falk Harnack, Kurt Huber, Marie-Luis Jahn, Trante Lafranz, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Katharina Schueddekopf,  Helmut and Sophie Scholl, Josef Soehngen, and Jurgen Wittenstein.  They are heroes of Europe one and all.

It is their Germany from which Chancellor Angela Merkel takes her inspiration.  It is an inspiration that the rest of Europe would do well to understand and respect as she grapples with the Eurozone crisis.  Yes, Germany can be heavy-handed from time to time.  That is partly a function of a modern Germany that is simply powerful, although that is not something most modern Germans feel.  It is also a function of Abraham Lincoln’s famous dictum that one can please some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but one can never please all of the people all of the time.  This is especially so in a place as diverse and complex as modern Europe.

Germany’s war history will always be told and rightly so.  One only has to zap television channels to find some documentary or film telling the story of Nazi atrocities and the eventual victory of the Allies over Nazism.  Indeed, I am intensely proud of my own country’s role in that victory.  However, it is now time to tell the story of Germany’s heroes for they are also OUR heroes and one is far more likely to understand and appreciate modern Germany if one understands their struggle and sacrifice.  

As Scholl uttered his famous cry not only modern Germany was born, but modern Europe.  The American, British and Canadian armies in the vanguard of democracy came to liberate the ideas they stood for.  White Rose Freedom called for “…freedom of speech, freedom of religion and protection of the individual citizen from the arbitrary actions of criminal-dictator states”.  They are the very principles of modern Europe. 

In all seven members of the White Rose group were executed by January 1945 and as a Briton, European and a democrat I honour them all. 

“Let Freedom Live!”

Julian Lindley-French

XBox Dreadnought?

Alphen, Netherlands.  20 February.  HMS Dreadnought at a stroke condemned every other battleship on the planet to the scrapyard.  Launched in 1906 she represented a revolutionary step change in ship design combining big guns and new Parsons steam turbines with heavy armour in such a way that she could out-gun, out-pace and out-protect any battleship afloat.  Is warfare about to encounter another Dreadnought moment – an XBox Dreadnought?

 

Two events in the past few weeks suggest for once that a real revolution in military affairs may be starting; a step change in the relationship between technology, force and effect that will profoundly impact strategy, tactics and doctrine.  Yesterday, American computer security firm Mandiant identified a building in Shanghai as the source of 147 cyber-attacks on the US as Unit 61398 of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.  Recent protests at the Senate confirmation hearings of CIA Director-elect John Brennan demonstrated the growing unease amongst human rights activists and legal scholars about the use of drones by US forces.  Both reports miss the essential point for taken together cyber and drones represent nothing less  than future war.

Drones first.  They offer a cheaper alternative to sending armies into difficult places during unpopular wars.  For hard-pressed political and military leaders exerting influence at low cost is an attractive option.  Ironically, the issue of actual comparative cost is not one that works today when compared to the use of manned aircraft.  It is a difficult comparison to make but several studies, including a 2007 study led your Blogonaut, suggest that drone costs per flight hour are not much cheaper than manned fighters or Apache attack helicopters.  The cost of the electronics is roughly similar and although there are savings in weight and there being no need to provide safety systems to support a pilot drones are not very effective in complex combat scenarios. 

However, whilst the operational flexibility they afford commanders may as yet be limited what matters is the ever growing distance between target and operator to the point where the latter is to all intents and purposes invulnerable.  And this is just the beginning.  Exactly the same can be said for cyber-attacks.  Clearly cyber and drones are here to stay as the market for the capability (both military and commercial) is booming and diversifying.  

Take cyber and drone technology together and the dawn of robot wars is a future that is not too hard to imagine.  This does not for a moment suggest that traditional platforms such as ships, aircraft and armoured vehicles will be rendered obsolete on the battlefield.  Rather, they will need to be seen as increasingly robotic (and upgradeable) platforms that are part of a battlefield so large and so remote that the distinction that Clausewitz made between strategy and tactics could become nigh on irrelevant. 

For the West it could be an opportunity to offset the high cost/low numbers problem all Western militaries face in which manoeuvre is only achieved at the expense of mass.  For Asian and other actors it could offer the chance to offset American technological advantage.  The ancient Chinese warrior-philosopher Sun Tzu said that “the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”. 

As yet no strategic concept worthy of the name has been crafted that incorporates concept, command, cyber, drones and platforms into a new way of warfare.  When that idea comes the XBox Dreadnought will be reality. 

The purpose of HMS Dreadnought was to make the cost for Germany of competing with the Royal Navy so high as to render a naval arms race impossible.  On the face of it the gamble failed.  In fact, Germany was never able to match the British given Berlin’s focus on land power.  Indeed, the thing about the Dreadnought was not the fact of new technology, but rather the way it was combined and the impact it had on naval strategy, tactics and doctrine.  This culminated in the May 1916 Battle of Jutland when the British and German battle-fleets clashed in the greatest sea battle in history in a way that would have been unimaginable even a decade prior.  And, whilst the tactical outcome of Jutland is contested the strategic victory it afforded the British is clear.  The naval blockade that did so much to force Germany’s 1918 submission was confirmed by Jutland.

Karl von Clausewitz said the overriding aim of war is to disarm the enemy.  Taken together cyber and drone technology suggest small beginnings for a very big and possibly dangerous future as the gap between action and effect is lengthened.  Given today’s strategic landscape historians may look back on this period as the true beginning of a form of robotic warfare.

One thing is clear – the eye in the sky and the ear in the ether is here to stay.  The race is now on for the XBox Dreadnought.

Julian Lindley-French

What has Brussels Ever Done for Us?

Alphen, Netherlands. 18 February.  In Life of Brian, freedom fighter Reg, leader of the ramshackle People’s Front of Judea, rallies his incompetent followers with a seemingly rhetorical question, “What have the Romans ever done for us?”  “The aqueduct”, suggests Xerxes.  “Oh yeah, yeah they gave us that. Yeah. That's true”.  “And the sanitation!” says Stan, “You remember what the city used to be like”.  “All right”, says Reg, “I'll grant you that; the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done...”  “And the roads...” suggests Matthias.  “Well yes obviously the roads... the roads go without saying. But apart from the aqueduct, the sanitation and the roads?”  “Irrigation, medicine, education, health”.  “Yes, all right, fair enough” says Reg. “And the wine...that's something we'd really miss if the Romans left, Reg” .  “What about Public baths?  And it's safe to walk the streets at night now”.  “Yes, they certainly know how to keep order.  Let's face it they're the only ones who could in a place like this”.  “All right... all right”, shouts an exasperated Reg, “...apart from better sanitation, medicine, education, irrigation, public health, roads, a freshwater system, baths and public order... what have the Romans ever done for us?”  “Brought peace?”  

 

On Saturday night over dinner with neighbours a similar sentiment was expressed; what has Brussels ever done for us?  The news was not good.  A neighbour from across the road has just lost his job because his trucking company had gone into liquidation undercut by competition from Eastern Europe.  A neighbour on the other side fears she will lose her job because of changes in European contract law that means her company must compete with cheaper labour from Eastern Europe.  A climate of fear now extends across the village and with it a growing sense of disenchantment with the EU in what had once been the political heartland of ‘Europe’. 

Today’s Europe is noticeable for a profound divide between those that are being paid for by the people of my village and the people of my village who are being rapidly impoverished by the euro crisis.  Indeed, ‘Europe’ is now seen as something bad that is being done to them, a sentiment one can trace across much of northern, western Europe. 

Thankfully politicians in the Netherlands are slowly beginning to wake up to the deep disenchantment felt in towns and villages like my own.  David Cameron’s seminal speech on Europe seems to have acted like a trigger with mainstream politicians much more willing to speak out against the centralizing ambitions of Brussels Centre.  Yesterday, Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans warned EU pretend President Herman van Rompuy that he was going too fast with his plans for ever closer union.  Moreover, the recent Brussels budget summit suggested the emergence of a new alignment for a Europe that serves its nation-states, not a Europe built on their eventual demise. 

This balance of competences battle is the heart of the battle over the future Europe.  Iain Duncan Smith, the British Secretary for Secretary of State for Work and Pension, warned of the ever-expanding and creeping powers of a European Commission determined to interpret its treaty ‘competences’ in the most aggressive manner possible. He was particularly concerned by Commission efforts to interpret responsibilities to protect the free movement of peoples as a ruse to interfere in national social security legislation.

 

It is no longer clear to my neighbours who or what is responsible for the aqueducts, sanitation, roads, irrigation, medicine, education, health, wine and law and order.  European regulation they neither want nor voted for is ever more apparent in their lives.  Moreover, they believe it is that self-same regulation that is making them poor in the name of ‘Europe’.  Clearly, national politicians too often blame Brussels for their own failings but behind the crisis an almighty power struggle is underway between the northern, western European taxpayer and Brussels Centre and its powerful political allies.  Not surprisingly my Dutch neighbours feel powerless and intimidated in the face of such forces and are deeply mistrustful of the political class as a whole.       

Of course, the usual self-aggrandising suspects in Brussels Centre trot out the usual mantra about the need for European solidarity.  However, on hearing this most northern, western Europeans simply reach for their wallet to see if their money is still there.    

The sad truth is that the ordinary people of my village are being asked the impossible in the name of Europe; to bear the cost of an ill-conceived currency and the appallingly irresponsible borrowing it triggered elsewhere, whilst being impoverished by a ‘Europe’ that traps them in a spiral of over-regulation, economic sclerosis and beggar-thy-neighbour politics. 

The European Union will only survive if Brussels Centre can clearly demonstrate benefit to the people on my street.  If ‘benefit’ is only yet more theoretical or political rhetoric in the mind of a dangerously detached elite or the supine academics that afford them succour then political Europe will inevitably fail.

What has Brussels ever done for us?  Brought peace?

Julian Lindley-French

When Will NATO Be Nobel-ed?

Oslo, Norway. 13 February.  The certificate room of the Nobel Institute has the feel of the headmaster’s waiting room of an English school.  This is something your Blogonaut was very familiar with in his youth as he spent much time in such places awaiting punishment for having been creative with school rules.  Nobel Laureate Nelson Mandela sits close by Kofi Annan, Aung San Suu Kyi jostles with Al Gore (?????) - the great, the good and a couple of American politicians.

 

The citation that announced the awarding of the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union in October last year stated, “The union and its forerunners have for over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe”.  Walking through Rome’s Fiumicino Airport last week I espied a big sign emblazoned across a wall celebrating the award and trumpeting the message that the EU had kept the peace in Europe for sixty years. 

This week I attended the opening of the Norwegian Atlantic Council’s Leangkollen Conference in Oslo’s Nobel Institute.  Looking at the certificates awarded to Peace Prize recipients with NATO Deputy Secretary-General Alexander Vershbow it struck me just how unfair it is that the Alliance has not been recognised as the true guardian of European peace during the past sixty years plus. 

The 2012 award to the EU was not as preposterous as some have suggested but it does point to the increasing politicisation of the Nobel Peace Prize.  Clearly, the role of ‘Europe’ in helping to institutionalise the post-1945 Franco-German rapprochement at the core of European Reconciliation Phase One was vitally important.  However, speaking to senior Norwegian politicians here it is also evident that the Nobel Peace Prize is indeed becoming politicised which is a shame.  In 2009 the Peace Prize was awarded to the then new President Barack H. Obama for simply not being George W. Bush (where do Americans get all these superfluous initials from?). 

In reality Franco-German reconciliation could not have taken place but for the security guarantee offered by NATO and by extension the taxpayers of America, Britain and Canada who bore much of the cost to keep the Red Army at bay during the deepest freezes of the Cold War.  And yet go to the European Parliament and the Euro-fanatics therein have completely air-brushed NATO out of Europe’s contemporary history.  It is as if the Americans, British and Canadians had nothing whatsoever to do with the European peace.  

NATO set out to achieve a Europe free and whole.  One only has to survey the map of Europe of today to see the incredible achievement of the Atlantic Alliance and its contribution to European peace and stability.  It is a peace and stability without which the European Union simply could not exist.  It is also a continuing mission.  The EU likes to present itself as the saviour of a Europe torn apart by war.  In fact it was the 1941 Atlantic Charter of the then two great democracies America and Britain that paved the way not only for victory in World War Two but eventually victory in the Cold War.  However, the difference between the EU and NATO is that the Alliance has had to take the hard, tough decisions over the use of force upon which sustainable peace in Europe has been built at the cost of both blood and geld.

In the Western Balkans, Afghanistan, Libya and a host of other challenging arenas NATO wrestles with the use of legitimate, proportionate force daily for the Alliance is no less a peace organisation than the EU.  However, NATO simply does not have the luxury of being able to eternally theorise about peace.  Crises happen and any visit to the Justus Lipsius building, home of the European Council and known as ‘Just Lips’, the European Commission or the European Parliament and it quickly becomes clear that the peace-building of the EU has NATO foundations.

In an ideal world/Europe the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize would have been awarded jointly to both the EU and NATO for they both played a crucial role in the European peace and they will both continue to do so.

Given that the Norwegian Nobel Committee needs to go back to first principles and ask itself a fundamental question: is the Nobel Peace Prize only for those who seek peace through non-violent means or is the Prize open to all those who have made a critical contribution to peace?  If it is the former then both Obama and the EU should be excluded.  If it is the latter then NATO must also be recognised.  

So, when is NATO going to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize? 2013 would do nicely.

Julian Lindley-French

Extremists Stay Away!

Dear All, I just noticed that amongst my followers a website of dubious standing.  Upon closer inspection I discovered this to be a bigoted and racist Islamophobic website.  Upon realising that I immediately blocked it.  Let me be clear; I am firm in my views about policy and I communicate those views robustly to get through to a political class that is increasingly distant from we the citizens and deaf to our concerns.  However, my firmest held belief is that all people are deserving of equal respect from whatever faith, creed, race or orientation they may hail.  My suspicion is that this unwarranted visit from an extremist may have been prompted by my use of the term 'Islamo-fascists' in a blog on Mali to describe the extremists of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. For the record I was quoting a leading analyst and director of one of London'd top think-tanks during an interview he gave to the BBC TV.  Again, for the record, I have the deepest respect for Islam and Muslims and that should be understood by all.

Extremists stay away! 

Julian Lindley-French

TAFTA: For the Love of Italy:

Rome, Italy. 7 February.  It is just a golden moment.  Above my Roman roof-top cappuccino a flash of dawn radiates across a golden city which for three thousand years has come to symbolise Europe. Every empire since from Charlemagne to the European Union claims in some way to be the political heir of either Roman Republic or Empire. I love this town, I love this country.  It is therefore sad to see my old Italian friend brought low, visibly fraying at the edges.  As February’s national elections beckon the discourse is about more Brussels not less, a metaphor for more of my Dutch taxpayer’s money so that Europe can prolong its agony in mutual impoverishment.  Italy does not need more Brussels.  Italy needs a real macro-economic game-changer.  Italy needs TAFTA, a transatlantic free-trade agreement.   

The plain truth is that I could no more abandon Italy to a debt-drenched future than I could my own Yorkshire kith and kin.  That would be unconscionable.  However, it is also clear that the partial and wrong-headed EU response to the Eurozone crisis will fail Italy (and Spain and others) in its hour of need.   The wrong-headedness will be evident today in Brussels as leaders wrestle over the EU budget. The agreement they reach will once again be to invest in Europe’s past rather than Europe’s competitive future.  TAFTA would force Europeans to again look outward and compete. 

However, for TAFTA to work Washington must also cure itself of the fantasy that a United States of Europe would look anything like the United States of America.  Left to its own devices the appallingly bureaucratic and hopelessly over-regulated, statist and uncompetitive European ‘USE’ would look far more like the sclerotic and ultimately doomed USSR – a Union of Soviet European Republics.

The sad truth is that the political unionists in Brussels Centre seek to use the crisis to extend their fiat at the expense of legitimacy, democracy, but above all competitiveness.  Indeed, by linking Europe’s political future to the current crisis Brussels Centre is critically preventing the establishment of a truly pan-European recovery programme.  Moreover, what will come out of Brussels today (if anything) will not help Italy.  The leaders will talk a lot about growth but in reality do nothing to promote Horizon 2020, the research and development fund, or help the small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) vital if Italy is to compete in a global economy. 

My visit to Rome was to address the excellent 58^th Assembly of the Atlantic Treaty Association.  There were two great elephants in a room full of defence wonks.  The first, naturally, was the Eurozone crisis which is the quintessential European security challenge of this age.  The other was TAFTA.  Indeed, I would go as far as to say the future of a credible NATO depends on TAFTA and a growth-driving transatlantic single market in goods and services it would create worth over 50% of global economic output.  

Rome is merely in the eye of the hurricane that is the Eurozone crisis.  The worst is yet to come.  The money and reforms Romans will need and have to go through before stability once again dawns is perhaps a decade away if there is no game-changer.  Therefore, the mantra of more Brussels must be pushed aside and a proper plan developed by ALL Europe’s nation-states within the wider macro-economic context that TAFTA would provide.

As I drove past Rome’s ancient forum below the Palatine hill where Republic and Empire tussled the ruins of a once great civilisation lay before me.  Decline and fall is now clear for all to see across Europe. Is that our shared European future?  As Brussels Centre edges forward with what one American friend calls a 'fascinating elite experiment' that she does not have to live with will the latter day republics and kingdoms that give Europe such cultural energy be replaced with a not so holy Brussels bureaucratic empire?  It is certainly a seductive ‘solution’ for many southern Europeans for like the Roman Empire of the first and second centuries this new statist Europe may offer temporary stability.  However, shorn of legitimacy, productivity and competitiveness it will ultimately fail mired in its own political decadence.    

The Obama administration says that TAFTA must be concluded quickly as the deal has to be done, “on one tank of gas”.  Sadly, the very people charged with promoting transatlantic “regulatory convergence” are the very Brussels Centre people who least want it.  For them TAFTA is a threat to their ‘competences’. 

TAFTA – for the love of Italy!

Julian Lindley-French

How Russia Won the War and is Still Losing the Peace

4 February.  Here in Verbier, Switzerland snow cascades from a grizzly grey slate sky in great dustings of caster white.  That is perhaps the only reality which a Swiss ski resort of today shares with frozen, broken Stalingrad a lifetime ago.  Russia’s President Putin said on the 2 February 70^th anniversary of the surrender of General von Paulus’s German Sixth Army, “We are proud.  Russia is proud of the defenders of Stalingrad…The Red Army lived and fought in this hell”.  Rarely do I agree with President Putin but he is absolutely right about the two hundred day battle of Stalingrad.  Russia’s critical role in the defeat of Nazi Germany helped create the very conditions by which I can write in freedom, even if in victory Moscow tried so hard for so long to deny that very freedom to millions.  The danger for a Russia that lost perhaps as many as twenty seven million citizens fighting Nazi Germany is that again Russia could slide away from freedom and its rightful place in Europe. 

  

Soviet Russia eventually collapsed in 1991 because it came to represent an impossible contradiction: the centralisation by bureaucratisation of utterly disparate peoples.  It is a lesson Brussels might learn today.  However, the fact the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) stumbled on for so long after 1945 had much to do with the narrative Stalingrad established at the heart of Soviet politics.  The Great Patriotic War became an alibi for uncontested Kremlin power and locked Russia and its satellites into the political stasis that would in time consume it.

In spite of the immense sacrifice of the war generation the moment a leader emerged who did not and could not base his political legitimacy within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on his war service Soviet Russia was doomed.  In 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev took power and immediately set out to modernise a Soviet Union that could honour Stalingrad but move beyond it.  It was simply too late and to this day Russia has grappled with the same dilemma.

The tragic irony for the heroes of Stalingrad is that they are still not allowed to rest in honoured peace in the Pantheon of Russia’s history.  With the announcement that Volgograd will resort to its wartime name Stalingrad, at least for the period of the anniversary, the danger is that contemporary Moscow will once again endeavour to ‘legitimise’ it power on the cult of the strong leader Stalin exploited and which Stalingrad came to represent. 

Joseph Stalin had no less blood on his hands than Hitler.  He penned an infamous pact with Hitler in August 1939 to keep Russia out of war.  Indeed, Stalin almost destroyed the very Red Army that would play such a crucial heroic role in defeating Hitler through brutal purges in the 1930s.

It is sometimes said of Britain (mainly in Germany for self-evident reasons) that until the British stop looking back to World War Two they can never take their place in the new Europe.  There is some truth to that, even if for those who make such a criticism new Europe is often a metaphor for a bureaucratic Europe that could bear striking similarities to the sclerotic USSR.  It is certainly true of Russia.

Lacking real political legitimacy Vladimir Putin could take Russia back into a sacrificial nostalgia and lock Russian society and his leadership in anachronistic aspic.  Such a political strategy may just last long enough to keep Putin and friends in power and wealth, but  it will do nothing to prepare Mother Russia for the twenty-first century.

Stalingrad was really the victory of ordinary Russia over a foreign, western criminal occupation.  It is a powerful story and utterly seductive to the Russian mind.  However, even the most cursory of glances at a map will demonstrate that the West is Russia’s one true friend.  Even the most cursory of glances at Russia’s economy demonstrates Moscow’s utter dependence on Europe for its fossil-fuelled wealth.

Every year Russia steps backward towards Stalingrad the longer and more painful the difficult journey will be for the Russian people to embrace political modernity.  And, the greater the unnecessary suffering and unwarranted poverty the Russian people will face.

Russia must honour the fallen of Stalingrad, as must we all.  However, it is time to let the dead rest and the memory of their suffering, sacrifice and immense achievement take its honoured place in Russia’s past not in Russia’s present.

At Stalingrad Russia won the war and then contrived to lose the peace. Here the snow continues to fall, each flake reflective of a lost Stalingrad soul.  For their sake the Russian people will always be welcome in freedom. 

One million people were killed during the battle of Stalingrad and I honour and respect every one of them.

Julian Lindley-French

Mali: Now What?

Alphen, Netherlands. 31 January.  Oscar Wilde once wrote “One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is that things are what they are and will be what they will be”.  As I witness the French, British and other Europeans rush to offer their very little militaries in support of an expanding Mali mission I am reminded of that famous little Dutch boy who stuck his finger in a dyke to stem a pending flood.  The gap between politician speak about “generational struggle” (dyke) and deep cuts to the very means needed to deal with such dangerous change (size of aforesaid finger) suggests either aforesaid politicians do not mean what they say (how can that be?) or they do mean it but do not know what they are doing (how can that be?).  Two questions now need to be answered; so what and now what?   

 

On the face of it there are good reasons to support the French.  For example, British PM David Cameron needs to show he is a ‘good’ European following last week’s now famous Euro-realist speech.  Moreover, today Prime Minister Cameron will announce not only that there will be no further cuts to the British armed forces, but he will officially confirm the €200bn ($271bn) military equipment programme I highlighted before Christmas.  The British government has finally come to realise that its armed forces are not only vital in and of themselves, but also underpin all other forms of British strategic influence, not least with an increasingly unfriendly Obama administration. 

However, London and all other European governments should be careful not to rush in at French behest to save a  la francophonie that France has jealously guarded hitherto as its sphere of influence unless one can really demonstrate a genuine strategic threat.  First, because one of the many lessons from Afghanistan is that the use of force in the absence of a meaningful political strategy (which includes political reconciliation) is but a short step to failure.  Watching Cameron jet off to Algiers yesterday had all the hallmarks of Britain being suckered into French problems.  What has happened to the informal agreement with France whereby Britain focuses its counter-terrorism intelligence effort on the Gulf and Yemen, whilst France focuses on la francophonie?  Third, in spite of calls by Paris for West African states and forces to step into the breach it is clear from discussions I have had that neither the money nor the forces pledged are likely to be anything like enough or good enough for a long time to come.  At present it looks like France (and the rest of us) is going to be there for a long time to come.

There is another reason for caution.  London is rightly keen to show that the 2010 Franco-British Defence and Security Treaty is worth more than the paper it is written on.  However, it is equally clear France not for the first time will happily take British support to get them out of a hole but offer little back in return.  Indeed, if Prime Minister Cameron thinks by stepping into la francophonie somehow Paris is going to change its implacably anti-British position on EU reform then he had better think again.  A taste of what is to come was all too apparent in comments made Tuesday by French intellectual (but appalling historian) Bernard-Henri Levy.  As Britain announced the commitment of some 340 troops to a training and support role Levy reacted with scornful derision.  He accused Britain of “spinelessness” and “inconsistency” for not committing combat troops.  He conveniently forgot that France repeatedly refused to move into southern Afghanistan, the crucible of the war therein, to support the British at a critical time in the campaign and has just completed a premature withdrawal from Afghanistan.  Whilst I honour the sacrifice of all coalition fallen in Afghanistan M. Levy’s comments reflect deep disrespect for the 440 British dead (as against 88 French dead) thus far in Afghanistan in what is meant to be an operation founded on NATO solidarity.  In other words, M. Levy, if you want Britain to support France shut up!

The French action in Mali was necessary to stop genocide.  However, my sense is that France and its allies are now drifting towards the great unplanned with no real sense of what they want to achieve, no real sense of how to achieve it and no idea at all how long it is going to take or what cost they will incur in lives or money.  Once again the solutions they are offering their publics exist purely in political imagininations.  This is action rather than strategy, heat rather than light. 

If the answers to my two questions can be both provided and demonstrated then there may be the making of strategy.  As Professor Colin Gray once wrote, “If we neglect strategic theory, marginalise it as irrelevant or unworldly then we are utterly at the mercy of the perspective of the moment”. 

Quite so! 

Julian Lindley-French

Europe and the Holocaust

Alphen, Netherlands. 28 January.  Yesterday was Holocaust Memorial Day, the sixty-eighth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet forces which last year I visited to pay homage to the murdered.  Here in the Netherlands Anne Frank wrote “In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.  I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death.”  Anne Frank died in March 1945 in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp days before its liberation by the British 11^th Armoured Division.  Almost seventy years on what does the Holocaust mean for the Europe of today?

 

The Holocaust or Shoah defines modern Europe because without wishing to deny the suffering of millions in the 1939-45 European war it was the murder of six million Jews and others that stalks European politics to this day and rightly so.  The 1957 Treaty of Rome which established the then European Economic Community (EEC), the forebear of today’s EU, “determined to lay the foundations of an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe”.  It might have added “…to prevent genocide ever again being committed on Europe’s soil”.  All the human rights legislation overseen by the Council of Europe against which so many Europeans rail was also inspired by the need to prevent such obscenities.  Anti-Semitism, far from being confined to Nazi Germany, was prevalent across Europe before the war.     

As David Cameron last week finally forced Europeans to begin considering the relationship between power and people and just what “ever closer union” should actually mean in the future Europe the Holocaust continues to provide Europe's ghastly context.  Like it or not Hitler’s ghost still haunts latter day Europe and at this tipping in Europe’s history the political balance European leaders must strike is indeed a delicate one. 

Clearly, Europeans have a special duty of care for the Jewish people but such care must also extend to all minorities.  Indeed, Europe will be judged by its treatment of minorities, especially at a time of hyper-immigration, weak economies and the social tensions inevitable at such moments.  Today’s seminal debate on the future Europe is really about the interaction of globalisation, Europeanisation and integration and by extension power, structure and liberty. 

However, finding a new European balance is not the same as simply embracing the freedom-eroding mantras of political correctness that so infects European politics and which is fuelling new intolerance, new censorships and the new discriminations felt by an increasingly oppressed majority. The Holocaust must always inform European politics but not enslave it.

That the Holocaust still defines a historical fault-line in Europe can be seen in the tension between British Euro-realists and Euro-federalists.  Britain was never occupied and never suffered the terror of occupation.  In the Netherlands alone some 205,000 Dutch people died, the highest proportion in any occupied territory.   Moreover, one only has to visit certain parts of Central and East Europe to very quickly realise the importance of the EU as a safeguard against dangerous nationalisms and the intolerance of minorities.  This is something most Britons simply do not understand.  Indeed, even Britain’s so-called 'pro-EU' lobby simply see the EU as a means to an end of economic stability, rather than the quintessential historical end in itself many Europeans believe it to be.

 

Ironically, both the federalists and realists are deep down driven by the memory of the Holocaust and the need to ensure it never happens again.  They simply disagree about how.  Former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, who is fast becoming the champion of federalism, when interviewed last week on the BBC suggested 'peace' in Europe can only be assured by a United States of Europe.  For Euro-realists the opposite is needed; a new separation of powers between Brussels and the member-states, in favour of the latter, to re-establish vital checks and balances that alone can prevent extreme abuse of extreme power. 

 

Ultimately political liberty must trump guilt however eloquently history speaks to Europeans.  The Holocaust must not be used as an implicit alibi for an ever closer union that is really about the undemocratic concentration of too much power in too few elite hands.  When the Treaty of Rome was drafted the key phrase was an ‘ever closer union of peoples’, nowhere does it call for an ever closer union of states which is how it has come to be interpreted by the Euro-federalists. 

 

Europe will continue to be held to account by its twentieth century history and rightly so.  However, Anne Frank is a heroine of mine precisely because in spite of the horror she endured her spirit soared alongside her belief in the essential goodness of humanity.  “Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl” is now online.  Read her, celebrate her and honour her belief in humanity.    

Never again!

Julian Lindley-French

The Dangerous Guy Verhofstadt

Alphen, Netherlands. 27 January. One of the beauties of a blog is the ability to react immediately. I have just been watching former Belgian Prime Minister and Euro-fanatic Guy Verhofstadt on a Dutch TV programme called "Buitenhof".  It is one of those political talking heads programmes that clog the airwaves of most European countries of a Sunday.  The main topic was of course Cameron's big speech on Europe this week.   It was strange to see my country being discussed at length with no Brit present who could offer a real insight into the strategic and political implications of the speech but hey ho! 

 

However, most galling was to watch the fanatical Mr Vershofstadt use blatant disinformation to make his case for Britain to stay in the EU and thereafter for a federal Europe that would, he said, come to look like the US.  He claimed that British trade with the rest of the EU represented over 53% of GDP.  Wrong.  It is 48% and declining.  He also failed to point out the EUR60bn trading deficit Britain suffers with the rest of the EU. He claimed that all the opinion polls show that the British people are clamouring to stay in the EU.  Wrong.  A poll for this morning's Sunday Telegraph shows a surge in support for Cameron and most of the polls suggest strong support for a referendum, a big majority in favour of repatriation of powers and a small majority in favour of leaving.  He asserted that the whole of British industry is warning Cameron not to push for a referendum. Wrong.  Most of British industry and commerce as represented through their respective trade bodies are strongly in favour of a reduction in EU regulations. 

 

Mr Verhofstadt is not simply a fanatic but he represents something very dangerous about the Euro-elite.  If the European people, including the British, are going to be subjected to this kind of propaganda the Europe that emerges could be something sinister.  It was after all Goebbels who said that if one repeats a big enough lie long enough people will start to believe it.

 

If you want to make your case for a federal Europe, Mr Verhofstadt, stick to fact not fallacy.

Julian Lindley-French

Poland's anti-British Anglophile

Alphen, Netherlands.  25 January. 

Dear Mr Sikorski, you are at it again.  You described Britain yesterday as a "country under special care" and that Poland would be happy to replace Britain in Europe's ruling triumvirate.  As you well know 'special care' in English implies a mental impairment. 

Here is just a bit of political education for you Mr Sikorski (your manners it would appear are beyond repair).  First, France and Germany have never let Britain be part of what you call rather clumsily the "ruling triumvirate".  There was no noticeable British presence at this week's fiftieth anniversary celebrations of the 1963 Elysee Treaty, the founding document of the Franco-German duarchy.  You must be an eternal optimist if you really believe France and Germany would ever let Poland into their club.  Will you have a real say over the Franco-German plan for deeper union which is to be rolled out this coming May?  Somehow I doubt it.  Second, it is strange to hear a Polish foreign minister seeking to create a new balance of power in Europe by offering to replace Britain in your triarchy. Surely the lesson of Polish history is that European integration should act as an insurance against the kind of power politics you clearly espouse.  Third, facts speak for themselves.  According to the IMF Poland had a 2011 economy worth $514bn, whereas the British economy was worth some four-times that at $2.4 trillion.  Poland has a population of 38.2 million against the British population of 65.5 million with a Polish GDP per capita of $13,469 against the British $38,811. 

So, good luck with your 'leadership' drive Mr Sikorski, but you will have to defy the gravity of the very power politics you clearly espouse if you are to succeed.  It may also be time that your President remind you that you are a foreign minister and that such language does no credit to your great country.  All your comment reveals is that you care little for minor political principles such as democracy and even less for the need to prepare the EU for the twenty-first century.  Instead your vision of the EU seems akin to a kind of centralised Union of European Socialist Soviet Republics.  Now there's an irony.     

You claim to be an Anglophile.  With friends like you we British really do not need enemies.  Good luck with your continuing hunt for a good job in Brussels.  I am sure the French and Germans will oblige.

Take special care with your language,  Mr Sikorski!

Julian Lindley-French

  

Euro-Realism: Well Said, Prime Minister!

Alphen, Netherlands.  23 January.  In November 1942 Winston Churchill famously said, “This is not the end.  It is not even the beginning of the end, but it is the end of the beginning”.  For two years I have waited for Prime Minister Cameron to stand up as a British leader and make a speech that establishes Britain’s Euro-Realist principles and gives the EU a wake-up call.  At a time of immense change both in the EU and the world Prime Minister Cameron this morning delivered that speech.  The message was as succinct as it was blunt; if EU leaders choose a legitimate union of nation-states and begin the reforms Europe desperately needs if it is to compete effectively in the twenty-first century then Britain will be a part of it.  If EU leaders choose instead the path towards a false union, a sclerotic, uncompetitive and unaccountable Brussels bureaucratic tyranny, Britain will leave, but only after a fight!

 

This was a principled, grand strategic Euro-Realist speech, not the little Englander euro-sceptic speech as characterised by the hopelessly-biased BBC and its supporters on the political left.  This was a British prime minister, leader of one of the world’s top powers, standing up for principle against the danger of an inadvertent, but nevertheless very real threat to democracy at this tipping point in Europe’s governance.  A road to tyranny set out all too clearly last night by former Belgian Prime Minister, and well-known elitist Euro-federalist Guy Verhofstadt, when he talked of the German-style Basic Law for a federal Europe which he said is coming.  Cameron also challenged the lazy notion that Soviet-style centralisation under the rubric of “ever closer political union” is either inevitable or good.  He stood up for ‘heretics’ like me who have had the courage to stand up for the Europe we believe in and been ostracised for speaking truth unto power. 

Critically, his speech offered five Euro-realist principles.  First (and foremost) he called for a competitive Europe.  The EU will fail it it tries to ring-fence Europe from world change and reality.  Second, he envisioned a flexible EU that no longer forces member-states into a single intolerant template.  Third, he demanded that power flow in two-directions between Brussels and the member-states, a commitment of a decade ago that has been conveniently forgotten by the Euro-federalists.  Fourth, he reminded all Europeans of the absolute centrality of real democratic accountability, not the false-legitimacy ‘offered’ by the appalling European Parliament.  Fifth, and finally, he reminded Europeans of the need for an EU built on that most British of traits – fairness.  Whatever new arrangements emerge within the Eurozone in 2014 the new EU that is coming must be fair to all and seen to be so. 

Above all, Cameron had the courage to trust the British people, unlike Ed Miliband the Labour leader or Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats.  Equally, he charged that same British people with the responsibility that now lies before them.  Britons have asked for a choice; they have now got it and when they make that choice it must be a considered choice.  By 2017 or 2018 when the referendum comes the current phoney war over the future of the EU will be over and Europe’s future direction will be clear.  EU leaders had better understand that it is the political context of the referendum which will decide the vote, for the majority of the British people are by no means anti-Europe.  If EU leaders act like Verhofstadt and are dogmatic and intolerant of legitimate British concerns then the vote will indeed become an in-out referendum.  Miliband and Clegg had also better understand that the offer of a vote now having been made to deny the British people would be electoral suicide. 

What Cameron offered was a British vision for Europe, one that should be taken very seriously. Indeed, far from being a speech that charts a path to a Brexit, if other EU leaders are sensible they will recognise that what Cameron said chimes with millions of ordinary European citizens on this side of the Channel.  Now a sensible, popular and lively debate must begin on the critical issues Cameron raised which will not only define Europe but Europe’s place in the world.  It is a vision for a Europe that puts citizens not elites front and centre and the just pursuit of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.  It is a call for an end to the nation-state crushing, freedom-destroying elitist political fantasy that the EU has become.     

Two kilometres from here is a small British war cemetery.  Five young Britons killed for the freedom of Europe lie interred in clay.  Cameron rightly reminded Europeans (and sadly the Obama administration) of a simple truth; Britain’s role in making the Europe of today was critical and Britain’s role in making the Europe of tomorrow will be equally critical.  It is not Britain that is turning inward away from a dangerous world; it is the EU as currently constructed. 

Well said, Prime Minister!  Now mean it!

Julian Lindley-French

 

Malgeria: Pause, Think, Plan, Act

Alphen, Netherlands.  21 January.  It is being called the “soft underbelly of Europe”, an entire sub-continent from the Maghreb to the Middle East that stretches down to the transitional zone between Saharan and Sub-Saharan Africa known as the Sahel region and beyond to Nigeria.  It encompasses both Algeria where the attack inspired by Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) took place on BP’s In Amenas gas plant, and Mali where French forces are currently struggling to contain a heavily-armed Islamist/Tuareg insurgency, many of whom were Gadhafi's mercenaries in Libya’s recent civil war.  In fact, the phrase ‘soft underbelly of Europe’ was first coined by Winston Churchill in November 1942 to counter growing pressure from Roosevelt and Stalin for what would have been a disastrously premature Second Front against the Axis powers in Europe during World War Two.  And, clearly, the region in question is not Europe.  Therefore, before sustained action is taken the events in both Mali and Algeria must be placed in context and blanket terms avoided that too often reflect a lack of real understanding.  What is happening is important but this is not the start another global war on terror. 

 

Two critical factors must now be gripped.  First, the Tuareg uprising is an unintended consequence of the Western-supported toppling of Libya’s Gadhafi, fuelled by the small and heavy arms now awash across the region which as a result is in danger of tipping the balance between state and anti-state forces in Mali.  Second, the nature of the insurgency and its links or otherwise to the strategic brand that is Al Qaeda and the so-called “global jihadist consciousness” need to be better understood.  The links may or may not exist and may or may not be strong but it would be a mistake to create a monster where none exists by dignifying criminality with some kind of religious, ideological grand strategy. 

Clearly, Islamist groups and criminals seeking to exploit and expropriate Islam have been growing rich in recent years though the retreat of the state across the northern half of Africa.  And, there will be some groups who clearly see the creation of ungoverned spaces as potential bases to attack the West to legitimise their activities in the eyes of followers.  However, just as the threat of global jihad was exaggerated post 911 it must not be exaggerated here.  If that happens the likelihood is that the West again will craft another failed strategy that again uses a hammer to crack a nut, and in so doing strengthens the nut.

The strategic aim of policy should be clear; the preservation of the state in the region with aid focussed on the reconstruction of state apparatus.  This is a struggle between the state and the anti-state and it is a vital Western interest to ensure states survive.

The strategy must in turn have six elements all of which should have been learnt from experience in Afghanistan.  First, a consistent intelligence picture must be developed across the region to better understand the extent and nature of the insurgency, the key movers and shakers and what if any links exist to outside forces, such as Saudi-based funding.  This will enable the intelligent use of force and resource over time and distance critical to strategy.  Second, Western elite military forces should be held as a mobile strike and support reserve to deal with specific crises and thus prevent state collapse.  Third, local (police), regional and national forces must be trained, equipped and properly paid to provide both the vital legitimacy and mass of boots on the ground to better stabilise and reconstruct.  This will help disaggregate insurgencies and criminality locally by helping to break any link between local grievances and AQIM that may exist. 

Fourth, a detailed mapping of aid activities must start with a focus on those programmes that deliver results via a strategic and co-ordinated aid policy with all concerned governments pooling their efforts.  EU this is a time for you to pull your finger out and for once turn theory and talk into successful practice.  Fifth, establish a new aid architecture that reinforces state legitimacy and efficiency via a Contact Group that incorporates Western and regional governments, African Union, Arab League, together with the EU, UN and World Bank.  Sixth, establish a proper auditing and reporting system built on sound output (not input) metrics for measuring aid performance and distinguish between aid (short-term) and develpment (medium-to-long term). Too much Western taxpayer’s money has been squandered over the past decade by peppering with money dysfunctional and under-performing programme in an attempt by governments to pretend heat was light.

The French were right to intervene in Mali to prevent a Rwanda/Sierra Leone-type genocide.  However, Western governments, in particular European governments, must now pause, think, plan and only then act.  The many lessons that have surely been learnt in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan must now be systematically applied in North Africa and beyond. 

Something must be done; but 'it' must be done properly. 

 

Julian Lindley-French