The Oxford Handbook of War 2014

Alphen, Netherlands, 15 January.  My books are a bit like London buses. One waits a year or so for one and then two come along at once. Last week I published my book Little Britain?  Twenty-First Century Strategy for a Middling European Power. This week the paperback edition of my enormous Oxford Handbook of War has been published by Oxford University Press.

 

The Oxford Handbook of War is unique.  My fourth book (of five) and my second for Oxford University, my alma mater, it took five years to research, plan, structure, prepare, write and edit.  It is certainly no pot boiler being almost 600 pages in length and some 45 chapters the Handbook considers war in all its forms – strategic, historical, political, military, social and economic.  Indeed the Handbook is a helicopter study of war as a phenomenon.

The Handbook was a joint collaboration with my old friend and co-conspirator Professor Yves Boyer of the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris.  Who says the English and French never get on?  ‘Research’ of course occasioned many hours sipping excellent French wine in Yves’s wonderful home overlooking the Loire Valley.  Yes, I suffer for my art.  Vive, l’entente intellectuelle!

In preparing the Handbook Yves and I were supported by over forty leading thinkers, policy-makers and leading civilian and military practitioners from across the globe - Brazil, China, Europe, India and the United States.  Indeed, the Handbook is graced by chapters Chiefs of Defence Staff, as well as a former US Ambassador to NATO and NATO’s Deputy Supreme Allied Commander, Europe.  The Handbook was nominated for the prestigious Duke of Westminster’s Medal for Military Literature, my second book to be so honoured. 

So that’s the plug.  Now, let me offer those of you contemplating the writing of a book a few words of advice, particularly as I have just enjoyed the delicious pain of writing yet another.  One does not write a book, one lives it.   One endures every comma, every word, every scintilla of a book – a word here or is it there?  A book is a solitary affair and yet it is a movie, an epic involving a cast of thousands.  And, like a movie one needs to believe, to put one’s heart and soul into ‘the project’ for many years before one sees the final cut...and one rarely becomes a millionaire. 

The active support of an excellent publisher is vital as is the commitment of a lot of very busy senior people.  The support of my publisher Oxford University Press was invaluable, particularly Dominic Byatt, Elizabeth Suffling and Sarah Parker.  Thanks guys!

So, if you want to understand war then I humbly recommend a copy of the paperback Handbook because as Plato once so poignantly put it, “only the dead have seen the end of war”.  Sadly, there is nothing I can see of this world that convinces me that war has been cast as a purely academic pursuit now the sole preserve of dusty historians with big titles.  Nor is there glory in war.  Yes, individual stories of daring-do shine through because war creates extreme experiences in otherwise ordinary lives.  Perhaps that is why so many (including me) are obsessive sports fans. 

War is dark, cold, and often boring, rent by sudden moments of terrifying, terrible terror which test for the instant but scar for life, leaving nightmares in many who then 'live'  life unsure of where a mind’s day ends and night begins.  Warriors of modern democracies walk amongst the society they fight to protect  often made distant from society by the very act of protection they offered.  The soldier pays an enormous price for the duty s/he owes. Indeed, as anyone beyond the moronic who has ever had any experience of war will tell you, there is no glory in war simply suffering for a purpose. 

Equally, it is utterly naïve to believe wars need not be fought nor will be fought again.  Be it the human condition, the shaky distinction between power and pauperism that humans create or simply that what is to come cannot be tolerated then war will continue to lurk amongst us all.

That is why Yves and I set out on this ambitious project; because war is important.  Yes, the book seeks to prevent war through the better understanding of it.  However, piety is for theologians; if war is to be fought it must be won and hopefully by those on the side of good.  Only then will war be seen as an exception to the human rule not a tombstone on it. 

The Oxford Handbook of War 2014; in all good bookshops now at a very reasonable price! 

Julian Lindley-French

Euro-Realism: Of Law and Power

Alphen, Netherlands. 13 January.  “Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world”, so advised eighteenth century German philosopher and father of Universalism, Immanuel Kant.  Kant is the darling Philosopher of the EU elite which believes that an entirely European concept of international law can replace power. Is that possible?
 

A new report from European Geostrategy (www.europeangeostrategy.org) seems to suggest that Europeans in principle still enjoy sufficient state power to be influential political realists.   In “Audit of Power” the group cites state power as a “productive force” based on “cultural pull, diplomatic influence, economic strength and military reach”.  The report concludes that in 2014 the United States is still the world’s most powerful state followed by Britain.  Thereafter in order of power come France, China, Russia and Japan with Germany a lowly seventh, just above Australia and Canada.

The report’s conclusions contradict my new book “Little Britain? Twenty-First Century Strategy for a Middling European Power (www.amazon.com). My book uses CIA figures to conclude that Britain is at best the fifth or sixth most powerful state in the world (at least on paper) and in rapid and exaggerated decline.   

One event this week helps to explain the friction. Two groups of left-wing lawyers have submitted a 250 page dossier to the International Criminal Court citing systematic abuse of Iraqi detainees by British politicians and military chiefs.  Their aim is as much political as legal; to replace state power with international law and thus prevent direct action by Western states.   

The dossier highlights the dilemmas Europeans today – the balance to be struck between law and power and its locus – national or supranational.  The EU is a consequence of Europe’s many power struggles over the ages.  Indeed, so many of Europe’s leaders act today like reformed power junkies – afraid that one ‘puff’ of state power might turn Europeans back into addicts of state power, with legalism the only antidote. 

Europe’s leaders are retreating into a definitively ‘rules-based approach’ to international politics in which law is progressively replacing power in the form of ‘universal’ EU ‘laws’ that go way beyond the intent of treaties.  In so doing Europe is abandoning traditional concepts of state sovereignty in favour of pan European rights.  The problem is that because Europe no longer sets the rules of the global road legalism detaches European security from world security.  So, whilst European states might on paper look powerful by paralysing action with legalism Europe punches far below their international weight. 

Legalism explains the friction between European Geostrategy’s rankings and my new book.  By trying to remove the balance of state power from Europe the EU has removed Europeans from global power reality.  My book cites Britain which more than any other member-state gold-plates EU rules and thus has drastically reduced London’s ability to run Britain let alone influence others both within the EU and without. 

An attempt to create a rules-based international system happened once before in the immediate aftermath of World War One with the creation of the League of Nations.  It was also based on Kantian notions of Universalism and also sought the replacement of power by law.  The reason it failed was that no effective sanction existed to punish defection.  Instead states were to be judged by the “court of public opinion”.   In 1939 the League’s international order collapsed in the face of Nazi Germany’s power perversion which haunts Europe to this day. 

Today, Brazil, Russia, India, China and many others are challenging the world-view of the European elite.  They share a very classical view of the world based on state power and the need to compete for their respective interests.  And, in spite of the rhetoric of the Obama administration, the US also shares much of that view.  Indeed, implicit in last week’s attack by former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates on the Obama administration is a Democrat/Republican split over where state power ends and law begins in international relations.

If the West is to survive into the twenty-first century its essential mission will be the search for a new balance between political realism and idealism.  The future of the EU, NATO and the transatlantic relationship are all dependent on such a balance being stuck.  Equally, for the West to prevail Europeans must first stop turning their noses up at power because Kant’s paradox is that if “purpose of action” is to become law then it must first be informed by power.    

If Europeans continue to replace power with rules and laws then once power predators will render themselves power prey.  Security in the twenty-first century world will not be achieved by Europeans simply abrogating power.  Rather, Europeans should better heed the words of seventeenth century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes who famously said that, “Covenants without the Sword are but words and of no strength at all”.

Julian Lindley-French

New Book: Little Britain? Twenty-First Century Strategy for a Middling European Power

It is my honour to inform you of my new e-book which has been published this week online at Kindle Select for the very reasonable price of $14.51/£9/10 Euros.

With a foreword by General Sir David Richards until 2012 the Chief of the British Defence Staff the book considers five key issues: the world Britain faces in the twenty-first century; Britain's role and ambition in Europe and the wider world; how Britain should defines its national interests and secure them; how best to organise and apply British national power through innovative national strategy; and the role of Britain armed forces in national strategy.

Although the book is about Britain the dilemmas, strategies, choices and options the book considers are pertinent to the US, all European states and indeed democracies the world over. The strategic choices Britain makes over the next decade will also have a profound effect on the institutions vital to British influence, most notably the EU, NATO and UN. 

The message of the book is stark: after a bruising decade of strategic failure and economic crisis Britain's decline is today rapid and accelerating. However, crisis is becoming an alibi for the political class with much of that decline is driven by a loss of strategic vision and will at the very top of government.

With proper leadership, a concept of national power invested in sound national strategy built on political realism Britain can remain a potent international actor with the influence to shape events rather than await their harsh judgements. Britain's elite must show strategic leadership that has too often been lacking of late as declinism and short-termism has led to the deliberate confusing of politics with strategy by the political class.

Britain’s exaggerated decline is hidden by the political metaphors of a political class that has retreated from pragmatism into dogma.  Many on the political Left champion the EU because they no longer believe Britain should compete as an independent nation-state.  Many on the political Right are dogmatically wedded to small government cutting the very tools of influence to the point of impotence.  The result is that the cost of influence increases and in so doings undermines the security and interests of the British people.

The specific focus of the book is Britain's future defence strategy, the bedrock upon which all forms of credible national power and influence are built. The book calls for a radical change in both the organisation and structure of the British armed forces so as to better prepare them for future challenges in a future operating environment that will undoubtedly test Britain and its people in an age of hyper-competition.

Britain must compete for influence and to secure its national interests. Therefore, the book concludes by suggesting a British strategy built on four sets of critical relationships all of which demand Britain invests policy with power:

1. A close strategic relationship with the US to help keep the Americans engaged in European security and defence by demonstrating to Washington that Britain is prepared to ‘lead’ Europeans in serious defence investment. This will help ease American over-stretch by keeping the US strong where it needs to be strong through an equitable sharing of burdens;

2. The establishment of a Euro-strategic partnership with Germany that recognises Berlin’s ‘strategic’ role in European economic and political stability in return for Berlin recognising British and French leadership of Europe’s military effort.  France will resent German leadership and further resent any relationship between London and Berlin that might appear to eclipse the Franco-German axis.  London will need to work hard to overcome French suspicions and German indifference;

3. The development of a stable Franco-British strategic defence partnership with a particular emphasis on a joint effort by London and Paris to improve and increase European expeditionary military capabilities; and

4. The re-establishment of strategic relationships with the English-speaking Commonwealth (Australia, Canada, Nigeria, India and others) lost when Britain joined the EU, as well as wider relationships with states such as Japan to reinforce a Congress of Democracies central to new worldwide security web.

The book is relevant to all those interested in strategy, policy and the decline of the West and I have chosen to publish online to make the book affordable and accessible. These days the social media is the best channel for independent strategic thought which I believe is vitally needed not just for Britain but the wider West. I would be honoured if you would read my work and recommend it to colleagues and friends.

Britain's leaders today suffer from the same delusion as the rest of Europe; they want to play soft power chess whilst the rest of the world wants to play hard power poker.

The book can be downloaded at Amazon Kindle Select: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HNNV1H8  For those with iPads there is a Kindle app that can also be downloaded.

Julian Lindley-French

Why the English are Angry in this Big Year for Britain

Alphen, Netherlands, 1 January.  Happy New Year!  Well, apparently not if you are English.  According to the much of the Press as I write hordes of Bulgarians and Romanians are en route to Dover courtesy of yet another diktat from loathed, lamentable Brussels.  With another wave of immigration likely elections to the European Parliament and the Scottish referendum there are lots of contentious issues in a 2014 that will be a big and possibly disastrous year for Britain.  The impact of these linked but distinct issues is that for the first time in many years the views of the English are suddenly in the political spotlight.  For the past decade and more the English have either been ignored or seen as a lab for some ghastly, failed political experiment in social engineering that destroyed the England I knew.  Five issues dominate the pub – poverty, Scotland, the EU, freedom, and of course immigration.

 

Firstly, England is becoming rapidly more populous but poorer.  The main crutch supporting hyper-immigration has been that it grows the economy.  With the British economy likely to grow between 2.5% and 3% next year there may be some truth to that.  However, with immigration growing faster than the economy the net result is a bigger economy and poorer people, a phenomenon most clearly seen in the rise of youth unemployment.

Secondly, the English have been marginalised in Britain.  Although some 90% of Britain’s 67 million people live in England devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has undoubtedly come at the expense of the under-represented, politically-marginalised English.  Moreover, with Scots contemplating an independence referendum on 18 September Westminster will spend much of the year appeasing the Scots at the expense (again) of the English. 

Thirdly, Euro-scepticism is a very English phenomenon.  The EU is seen as a form of foreign legislative occupation that has failed the English badly costing them far more than they gain.  Brussels is perceived by much of the English population as openly anti-English fronted by a London Establishment unwilling to fight England’s corner.  The English were told that joining the then European Economic Community back in 1973 would strengthen Britain and make the English more prosperous.  Internationally Britain (and by extension England) has been profoundly-weakened by an EU first dominated by France and Germany and now dominated by Germany.  Domestically, by transferring so much funding power to the EU Brussels is steadily replacing London as the decisive locus for decision-making.    

Fourthly, England’s sense of self is being steadily undermined.  Britain was built on ancient English concepts of freedom.  By signing up to EU treaties that fundamentally change the relationship between leaders and led and human rights legislation that fundamentally changes the relationships between rights and obligations belief in the efficacy of representative democracy is fast collapsing in England.  If power is elsewhere what is the point voting for people who cannot actually do anything?  Indeed, the EU is seen by many as an illegitimate, bureaucratic assault on ancient English rights and liberties.  Perhaps the most hated phrase in England these days is “new European regulations…”

Fifthly and finally immigration is again on the rise.  In many ways immigration has indeed been a good thing for England as the best and brightest of many poor societies have been cherry-picked to support an ageing society.   However, immigration has also imported real hatreds, intolerance and criminality into England and has done grave damage to English society.  A close friend of mine is a black community leader in Salford in the north of England.  He told me recently a chilling story about the impact of Eastern European organised crime on his community.  The Yardee gang drawn mainly from the Afro-Caribbean community tried to resist.  A battle for the streets ensued lasting three days before the Yardees were forced to retreat in the face of utter brutality.  London as usual is in denial.

For all that blaming immigration and immigrants for England’s woes is far too simplistic and wrong. Immigration is rather a metaphor for the collapse of trust between the English and an unworldly, failed Westminster political class.  The real problem is the dangerous gap between a political class that has retreated steadily into a private conversation between themselves about fantasy policy, pretend power and political correctness.  Today, the gap between that which politicians say, what they can do, and what they actually do is now a gulf of credibility open to political exploitation. 

However, in his big year for Britain the English must also be clear what it is they want.  The only way for England to be again a self-governing country is to let the Scots go, leave the EU and establish an English Parliament with real power.  And yet many English people are confused, trapped between romantic Englishness, romantic Britishness, failed Europeanness and hard-headed political calculation.  I am no different.  

The English simply no longer believe their politicians have their best interests at heart…and they are right!

 

Julian Lindley-French

The Battle of North Cape

Alphen, Netherland. 26 December, 2013.  Seventy years ago today one of the most important and least known naval battles in history took place.  At the height of the Second World War the German battle-cruiser KM Scharnhorst ventured out of a Norwegian fjord to attack a British convoy en route to Murmansk, Russia.  She was ambushed and sunk by the Royal Navy in what was the first ever use of synchronised computers, radar and heavy guns.  In the perpetual dark of the December Arctic the Battle of North Cape was the last exclusively battleship-to-battleship gun duel in naval history and in effect the dawn of the guided missile age at sea. 

 

On 25 December the Scharnhorst had set sail from Alta fjord under the command of Konteradmiral Erich Bey with five Narvik-class destroyers in escort to attack convoy JW55B.  Little did Bey know he was sailing into a carefully laid British trap.  Supporting the convoy over the horizon steamed Force 2 comprising the heavy battleship HMS Duke of York under the command of Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser, together with the light cruiser HMS Jamaica and four destroyers. Critically, HMS Duke of York was armed with ten fourteen inch guns and equipped with the latest radar technology.  Directly supporting the convoy was Force 1 comprising a heavy cruiser HMS Norfolk armed with eight eight-inch guns, two two light cruisers HMS Belfast and HMS Sheffield, and four destroyers under the command of Vice-Admiral Robert Burnett. 

At 0900 hours on 26 December the Scharnhorst, shorn of its destroyers unable to cope with the mountainous seas, engaged Force 1.  Twice during the subsequent hours Burnett anticipated Bey’s moves and beat the Scharnhorst off even though the British cruisers' guns were no match for the eleven inch guns of the German battle-cruiser.  Critically, during these early engagements Scharnhorst lost what limited radar capability she possessed.

All this time HMS Duke of York was closing the Scharnhorst.  At 1648 hours HMS Belfast fired star shell illuminating Scharnhorst fore and aft and HMS Duke of York opened fire at the short-range of 11900 yards (10900 metres).  Using her Type 284M radar gunnery control system she straddled and hit the German battle-cruiser with her first salvo.  Thereafter, thirty-one of fifty-two radar-controlled salvoes straddled and hit Scharnhorst.  The Scharnhorst was caught so completely unawares of the British battleship’s presence that her main armament was trained fore and aft.  Petty Officer Godde, one of 36 survivors from a crew of 1968 (11 British sailors died on HMS Saumarez) said later that the first time the Scharnhorst realised she was under attack from a British heavy battleship was when enormous waterspouts erupted around her.  These could only have come from the heaviest of guns.

Scharnhorst used her superior speed to escape the trap laid by an enemy that now numbered one battleship, four cruisers and some eight destroyers.  However, as the range opened between HMS Duke of York and the Scharnhorst so did the plunging power of the British fourteen inch shells.  At 1820 hours a shell plunged deep into Scharnhorst’s vitals and destroyed No. 1 boiler room drastically reducing her speed to ten knots.  Scharnhorst’s fate was sealed.

Scharnhorst was steadily-overhauled and at 1825 hours Bey sent the forlorn signal “We shall fight on till the last shell is fired”.  By 1850 hours Scharnhorst was surrounded by British ships which were pouring fire into her at close range.  She was pummelled to destruction. 

Admiral Fraser later said that Scharnhorst’s last hour was most distasteful.  However, living up to the honour of the Germany Navy and her own motto “Scharnhorst immer Vorwaerts”, the beautiful German battle-cruiser refused to surrender.  At 1945 hours she eventually sank given the coup de grace by torpedoes from the Norwegian destroyer Stord and HMS Scorpion.  Fraser sent the succinct message to the Admiralty “Scharnhorst sunk”.  “Grand well done”, came back the reply.

The destruction of the Scharnhorst marked the effective end of the challenge of Germany’s once powerful surface fleet.  The German battleship KM Tirpitz lay broken in Tromso Fjord badly damaged by a British midget-submarine attack earlier in 1943.  She would never fight again.  On 12 November 1944 the RAF Lancaster’s of 617 Dambusters Squadron, under the command of Wing Commander J.B. Tait, sank her with twelve thousand pound Tallboy bombs.  Scharnhorst’s sister-ships Admiral Scheer and Gneisenau were holed up in the Baltic and would never again pose a threat.

Relevance today?  Any military worthy of its duty must have high-end military capability that properly combines eyes, ears, speed, firepower and protection.  Scharnhorst sacrificed armour and firepower for speed. However, with her new radar HMS Duke of York negated the very concept of the battle-cruiser proving how quickly military systems can become obsolete as the electronic age of warfare dawned. 

The KM Scharnhorst fought with the professionalism and honour one would expect from the German Navy and which one sees in today’s German Navy.  On the evening of the battle Admiral Fraser said to his officers, “Gentlemen, the battle against Scharnhorst has ended in victory for us.  I hope that if any of you are ever called upon to lead a ship into action against an enemy many times superior, you will command your ship as gallantly as Scharnhorst was commanded today”.  

This note is in honour of the men of both sides who fought and died in the icy seas off Norway’s North Cape seventy years ago today and the men and women of the modern Royal Navy and German Navy…friends and allies.

The Battle of North Cape was a tragedy of war, but it was war and it had to be fought and won.  The battle is still with us today.  HMS Belfast is moored at peace opposite the Tower of London her guns pointing protectively northwards over the great city. 

Julian Lindley-French

EU Defence: Not Much Ado about Nothing Very New

Alphen, Netherlands. 20 December.  Looking through the usual empty guff about Europe’s role in the world last night’s Joint Statement on the Common Security and Defence Policy  by EU leaders came down to how to afford a few unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) and a few air-to-air refuelling aircraft.  As a statement of the strategically-irrelevant it comes straight out of the ‘we only recognise as much threat as we can afford’ school of European appeasement.  European leaders (as ever) avoided the real issues facing European defence: how to afford, generate and organise a full spectrum capability of military forces (affordability); where best to organise them (EU or NATO); and who has control over them (sovereignty)?

 

The affordability question goes to the very heart of Europe’s defence crisis.  Europeans spend around €180bn/$246bn per annum on defence with much of it a chronic waste of European taxpayer’s money.  Indeed, there are nineteen EU member-states that spend less than €4bn/$5.5bn per year and extremely badly whilst 90% of all defence-technological research in Europe is done by just three countries – Britain, France and Germany.  Meanwhile, Russia aims to inject about €568bn/$775 billion by 2022 for new armaments and a more professional military whilst Beijing increased the Chinese defence budget by a further 10% in 2013 bringing defence expenditure close to 14% of GDP (Read this week’s Japanese National Security Strategy).  In other words, if Europeans were in the real world they would realise that something radical must be done to afford Europeans twenty-first century defence.  At the very least the smaller European nation-states must consider defence integration.

However, defence integration raises the second question; should the EU or NATO lead such an effort?  Today, the indivisibility of European defence is a myth.  Different states want different things from different institutions and invest accordingly. One reason for Europe’s military paralysis is that there are European federalists within the European Commission and beyond who see an opportunity to use Europe’s defence to further erode state sovereignty.  Indeed, whilst the European Commission is absolutely right to warn about the inefficiency of the European defence industrial base it is utterly wrong to believe EU control would afford the European taxpayer a more competitive arms industry. 

Worse, only Britain and France retain some commitment to maintaining warfighting power and thus an ability to work with US armed forces.  The need to maintain transatlantic military cohesion has traditionally made NATO the locus for the generation of military power however hard France has tried to replace NATO with the EU.  Sadly, NATO is a busted flush and faced with American disinterest and the Eurozone crisis many Europeans are now clustering around Germany and by extension Germany’s EU.  However, Germany is caught in a history trap; the more powerful Berlin becomes politically the less military. 

It is who has control over future European forces that is ultimately at the heart of Europe’s defence paralysis.  The central paradox of European defence is that remove the sovereignty question and pragmatic progress would be far more likely towards a credible European force.  However, whilst defence integration makes sense from the affordability angle from the utility of force angle it is it little short of alternative pacifism.  The Benelux countries are a case in point.  Belgium, the Netherlands and mighty Luxembourg are deepening defence co-operation but getting the three countries to agree over the actual use of a single force makes crisis management glacial…and thus oxymoronic.

Britain as ever in the EU these days is the outlier.  In 1953 Winston Churchill in rejecting British membership of Europe’s first attempt at European defence integration said, “We are with them, but not of them”.  On Wednesday in a London speech the British Chief of the Defence Staff General Sir Nick Houghton warned about the hollowing out of British armed forces by repeated defence cuts.  One argument in in my January e-book “Little Britain?  Twenty-First Century Strategy for a Middling European Power” is this; if Britain does not offer a leadership alternative in Europe and properly invest in the influence powerful British armed forces would afford London the British could well in time have join the very European Army it fears.

There is one final irony over last night’s non-event.  Fifteen years ago this month at St Malo Britain and France established a blueprint for EU defence that would have seen the development of a NATO-compatible capability that would have afforded the Union ‘…the capacity for autonomous action”.  If anything Europeans are now further from autonomous action than ever and thus more reliant than ever upon the United States for their defence.  However, the Americans will be busy this century and unless Europeans find a way to generate credible and useable strategic military power – be it organised through the EU or NATO - the real consequence of last night will be a Europe that is to all intents and purposes defenceless.

Merry Christmas!

Julian Lindley-French

Mandela, Europe and the Integrity of Leadership

Alphen, Netherlands. 18 December.  A South African satirist Jonathan Shapiro tells a tale about Nelson Mandela that typifies the great man.  In the mid-1990s he had been lampooning then President Mandela savagely in a Cape Town newspaper.  One morning Shapiro receives a telephone call from the President.  In that wonderfully resonant voice Mandela says, “I am very disappointed in you, Mr Shapiro”.  Shapiro fears the worst. “What have I done, Mr President?”  “Your cartoons are no longer in the newspaper and I cannot start my day without them,” Mandela replies.  “That’s a relief.  I thought I had offended you, sir”, Shapiro says.  “No not at all.” Mandela replies.  “That is your job”.  Mandela understood that in a democracy power is held in trust and that the first duty of a leader is to preserve the integrity of leadership.

 

Contrast that with EU leaders today.  This week will see biggest transfer of national sovereignty to counter-democratic EU institutions since the creation of the Euro.  What had been billed as an EU summit devoted to European defence has been hijacked to create a Restoration Fund for failing Eurozone banks and to pave the way for European Banking Union.  This may sound on the face of it the stuff of Euro-geeks but it is in fact a massive step towards both political and monetary union…and Europe's citizens were not meant to realise it. 

The retreat by European leaders from the integrity of leadership is typified by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.  Knowing Dutch resistance to these plans Rutte reported to the Dutch Parliament this week that the communique from the last EU summit in October had been “mistranslated” from English into Dutch.  When he said that there would be no more transfer of sovereign Dutch powers to create a European Banking Union he had meant to say there will be a transfer of more sovereign Dutch powers to Brussels in the form of “politically-binding contracts”. 

Beware geeks bearing gifts.  Although Britain is not in the Eurozone the implications for the City of London and British banks are profound.  At a stroke Frankfurt rather than London will become the banking centre of Europe, which is what Berlin is, er, ‘banking’ on.  For the European Central Bank and European Commission to have such powers is a treaty-change in all but name.  Deputy Prime Minister and Commission Odysseus Nick Clegg is always telling the British people that any significant shift of more powers to Britain will trigger a “treaty lock”, i.e. a referendum.   Not a murmur from Clegg or London. The “treaty lock” is yet another con.

Half union, half empire what is taking place is the dangerous concentration of power in a few elite hands in Europe with unelected bodies given ever more power in the name of the ‘Europe’ and with Germany providing what is left of national oversight.  English philosopher John Stuart Mill established a fundamental principle of libertarianism that informed Nelson Mandela’s leadership and which for democracies establishes the fundamental contract between elected leaders and led.  The Harm Principle says that “no-one should be forcibly prevented from acting in any way he chooses provided his acts are not invasive of the free acts of others”.  When one replaces democracy with bureaucracy and/or empire one replaces rights with obligations.   

With polls suggesting that 30% of the new Parliament could be comprised of Euro-sceptics Brussels is of course warning about ‘populists’ emerging at next May’s elections for the European Parliament. Bring it on!  To the Euro-elite anyone who challenges their 'vision'  is a populist.  Europe desperately needs more checks and balances at the European level because elected national leaders are failing in their first duty to their peoples. 

As Rutte demonstrated all too clearly with the marked exception of Germany most European nation-states are fast being stripped of all meaningful sovereignty.  Rather, the European Union looks ever more like the failing Roman Republic of the first century in which aristocratic Senators would routinely suggest that whilst they were for the people they were not of the people.

Seen through the light of Mandela’s example the cavalier attitude of Rutte and his fellow EU leaders to democracy, sovereignty and the will of the people is appalling.  Madiba’s genius was to be both of the people and demonstrably for the people precisely because he had seen the abuse of power at first hand and understood the vital importance of integrity in leadership. 

As the great man once said, “What counts in life is not the mere fact we have lived.  It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead”.  To paraphrase Lincoln’s Gettysberg Address; government for the people, of the people, by the people should not perish from Europe…but with European democracy an empty husk it could soon do so. 

Julian Lindley-French

Gutter Politics

Sometimes it is hard to take British politicians seriously.  Conservative MP David Morris has this morning written to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in London claiming that a Labour MP Jack Dromey incited racial hatred.  The alleged offence took place in a Tweet Mr Dromey sent after visiting a postal sorting office in Birmingham after Mr Dromey had met a postal worker whom he clearly liked.  I have looked at both the Tweet and the attached photo and it is perfectly clear that Mr Dromey was likening his new best friend to a character in a famous old British TV comedy.

 

By turning this innocent event into an issue of race Mr Morris is playing gutter politics at a sensitive moment and damaged the free speech he claims to uphold.  Ordinary Britons are now cowed into silence by events like this and no longer believe it safe to say anything for fear of falling foul of Britain's draconian race laws.   Worse, by making this spurious complaint he puts the police in an impossible position because he is in effect asking them to become thought police.  The creeping paranoia of the powerful over race is slowly destroying British society and liberty.

 

I am no great fan of the Labour Party but through this exercise in gutter politics Mr Morris has brought Parliament, MPs and the Conservative Party into further disrepute.  We the citizens are in despair that our leaders seem incapable of taking correct decisions, use laws to mask the consequences of their appalling failures, and play lowest-of-the-low politics with each other.

 

Stop playing gutter politics Mr Morris and get out into real Britain.  There you will see the mess you and your colleagues of all political persuasions have created.  There you will meet people who need your help and above all there you will see the very serious social issues for which we pay you to fix.

 

Julian Lindley-French     

 

European Defence: Red Team Europe?

Alphen, Netherlands. 13 December.  Last Monday over dinner in Brussels NATO Deputy Secretary-General Alexander Vershbow stressed the importance of what had been billed as the EU European Defence Summit next week.  He said it would generate momentum towards the September 2014 NATO summit due to take place in Britain and which would consider the Alliance beyond 2014.  Then the news broke that the EU summit would not discuss defence until lunch on the second day and then only for 90 minutes half of which would be devoted to defence-industrial matters.  Chatting Wednesday with a Royal Air Force fighter pilot of 100 Squadron next to his aircraft both the problems with European defence and a possible first-step solution presented themselves.

 

The problems:  European defence is stymied on several levels.  At the strategic level there is a growing cultural gap between the British and French, on the one hand, who remain committed to an expeditionary concept of military power, and much of the rest of Europe which is downsizing armed forces in line with Germany’s leap of faith into soft power.   

At the operational level the toxic effect of over a decade of national caveats and red lines in Afghanistan has sorely undermined trust.  The Americans, British and French can never be sure that the allies will be with them at the point of contact with danger.  Consequently, the three powers cannot afford to step over the sovereignty threshold and abandon a full spectrum capability even if for the two residual European powers that means armed forces with a little bit of everything but not much of anything.

At the defence-industrial level the absurd plethora of metal-bashing basic defence industries in Europe are kept afloat by narrow vested interests, the need to keep people employed in the midst of an economic crisis and a growing interoperability gap between Europeans.  The latter gap is now so acute that it is driving deep divergence in the capability choices that Europeans make.

The opportunity:  Military innovation is vital. Spending a day in my native Yorkshire with Group Captain Steve Reeves at RAF Leeming and his professional and enthusiastic team I was struck by the need to re-think how European armed forces see exercising and training.  The job of 100 Squadron is to provide “Red Air”, i.e. play the enemy, so that the latest generation of RAF fighters such as Typhoon and Lightning 2 (JSF) can preserve a vital war-fighting edge. 

Two challenges:  First, the Hawk aircraft used by 100 Squadron is over 30 years old and whilst good it will soon be unable to recreate the battle tactics of, say, the latest Chinese and Russian fighters.  Second, all Europeans need to conceive a wholly different way of organising military power over the next decade if they are to have any chance of balancing military capability with capacity and thus be maintained as credible war-fighters.

In my January 2014 book “Little Britain – Twenty-First Century Strategy for a Middling European Power” one of my arguments is that Britain’s armed forces must pioneer a revolutionary concept of deep or organic jointness.  Indeed, only though organic jointness will the British armed forces be credible across the five domains of twenty-first conflict; land, sea, air, cyber and space.  Britain has created a Joint Force Command to lead that process and in a sense RAF Leeming is fast becoming a Red Teaming hub.  However, the effort goes nowhere near far enough.

My vision for a base like Leeming would be a Red Team Hub supported by an exercising and training development programme built on scientific and operational rigour.  Leeming would become a place where knowledge, capability, technology and practice come together through synthetic simulation and exercising and training not just for the Royal Air Force, but also for the Royal Navy and the British Army.  Knowledge of strategic and operational developments would help generate realistic scenarios, the best technology would fully exploit simulation, and operational exercising and training would really test military practitioners for the coming challenges. 

Leeming's mission would be to drive organic jointness by bringing exercising and training properly in-line with force and equipment development and emerging challenges.  If not the exercising and training capability could soon fall off a cliff and Britain’s armed forces would only be able to prepare for what they can do rather than what they need to do.

The European angle?  The need to rebuild trust is vital.  RAF Leeming already supports European allies and partners.  By turning a base like RAF Leeming into a European Red Team hub European leaders could announce a defence win-win.  Momentum would be re-injected back into an EU and NATO defence effort that is close to imploding and value-for-money would be demonstrable in these austere times.  The good news is that in setting up the Operational Training Centre at RAF Leeming the Royal Air Force clearly shares at least some of my vision.

Sandy Vershbow said the NATO 2014 summit would be committed to 3Cs – capability, connectivity and co-operative security.  If nothing radical is done the summit instead will be yet another exercise in strategic pretence. European defence needs something positive to say and Red Team Europe is it. 

Julian Lindley-French 

EU-NATO: Playing at Defence

Brussels, Belgium. 10 December.  The EU and NATO are in deep crisis.  The EU because it is a) organised around Germany which for understandable historical reasons trades down military power as it trades up economic and political influence; b) Britain, one of its two serious military powers, is now so marginalised it is considering leaving; and c) the Eurozone cannot look beyond the Euro.  NATO is in crisis because its major shareholder is being stretched ever thinner the world over.  Like it or not, over-stretched and uncertain America will soon be unable to be credibly effective in both Asia and the Middle-East at one and the same time.  China and Russia are making sure of that.  Both are in crisis because too often Europe’s politicians confuse strategy with politics. 
 

This morning I had the honour to address the Atlantic Treaty Association’s conference on NATO post-2014.  At the conference I was asked to address four questions concerning the role of the EU in NATO’s Strategic Concept, actions the EU and NATO must take to increase co-operation and the concerns such co-operation creates to both institutions.  This was illuminating because it was the nearest the conference came to addressing the real question facing Europe – how can Europeans close the hard power strategy gap that is growing by the day and which is destroying the ability of Europeans to influence, secure and if needs be defend even their vital interests?

The need is pressing.  First, according to the International Energy Authority the United States will be self-sufficient in oil and gas by 2025.  Second, according to a 2010 Citigroup report whilst Western Europe represented 48% of world trade in 1990, it is 34% in 2013 and likely to fall to 19% in 2030 and 15% by 2050.  Russia aims to inject about $775 billion by 2022 for new armaments and a more professional military.  Beijing grew the Chinese defence budget by 11.2% in 2012 the latest double digit increase since 1989. 

 

In other words, (1) Europeans will need to do far more and be far more credible in future as security actors ‘in and around Europe’; (2) if Europe as a whole is to afford the tools of influence – diplomacy, aid and development and the hard military power upon which influence is built -it will collectively need to invest in capabilities and capacities and then radically re-organise.  Sadly, the 19-20 December EU CSDP summit will be another missed opportunity in which very little will be presented as very much. 

The EU-NATO Strategic Partnership should be established on a simple Euro-Atlantic strategic principle; keep America strong in Asia by filling the emerging strategy gap in and around Europe.  That will better inform crisis management, capability development and political consultations.  The retreat from this principle has Moscow scenting an opportunity to interfere the grand strategic and Euro-strategic consequences of which are all too clear in Ukraine.

What is happening instead is faced with political and institutional paralysis big power is stepping outside institutional frameworks.  In other words, both EU and NATO need big power to function and big power to function properly together.

My prescriptions for EU-NATO co-operation are thus radical.  Structure must follow power. First, the EU’s European External Action Service must be properly configured so that it moves beyond managing the daily crisis between the European Council and European Commission (not to mention the Member-States). 

Second, both the EU and NATO should be seen for what they are; means to a strategic end for the states involved.  Co-operation should thus be established on the pragmatic basis of the efficient and effective aggregation of power and influence.  That will mean looking beyond the moribund EU-NATO Strategic Partnership (which is neither strategic nor partnership) to focus instead on a co-operation development plan between now and 2020 established on several programmes. 

Programmes should include (inter alia) joint exercising and training based on lessons from over a decade of operations; promotion of procurement clusters; civil-military experimentation (the Comprehensive Approach), finding ways to spread the cost of military modernisation, investment in people through harmonised defence and security education; and for smaller European states the beginning of defence integration from the tail to the teeth.  Such integration would be needed to close Europe’s strategy gap irrespective of either the EU or NATO.  Indeed, the whole nonsensical debate over a European super-state is actually preventing defence integration not promoting it.

In November NATO Secretary-General Rasmussen said, “We need to develop capabilities, not bureaucracies…”  In Europe today no-one talks power any more, one only talks institutions. 

But here’s the rub; next week the much-heralded EU “European Defence Summit” is scheduled to take place.  Part of its remit was to pave the way to more constructive EU-NATO relations at the September 2014 NATO Summit.  Well-placed sources now tell me defence will not be discussed by Europe’s leaders until lunch on the second day, then only for 90 minutes and half of that will be devoted to defence-industrial matters.

EU-NATO - playing at defence.

Julian Lindley-French

Thank You, Mr Mandela

Alphen, Netherlands. 6 December.  There are not many events that have moved me to tears.  The first man on the moon in 1969, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 did.  The other was watching Nelson Mandela walk into a freedom he used to set an example to the world.  I am not a religious man but I am a Mandela man.  Thank you, Mr Mandela.

Julian Lindley-French 

Re-Shoring - How China is Risking its Future

Alphen, Netherlands. 5 December.  British PR-Meister David Cameron was in Beijing this week selling Britain to the Chinese.  No, I mean literally selling Britain to the Chinese.  I think he got about twenty quid for Scotland, which to my mind is far too much especially as come next September they could well be offering themselves to anyone for next to nothing.  He also promised to raise the issue of human rights with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang.  Given how desperate Dave is for money one can imagine the conversation.  Desperate for dodgy dosh Dave: “So, Li, how are human rights doing in China?” Li: “Fine”.  Dave: “Good.  How much will you give me for Manchester?  Thirty quid and I will throw in free delivery.” 

 

What was strange about Cameron’s trade visit was it seemed completely detached from the volcanic geopolitics in the East China Sea.  Having finally settled on something that to Cameron’s a-strategic mind looks like a strategy – mercantilism – nothing was going to get in the way of a deal.  Now, don’t get me wrong, with the EU a mutual impoverishment pact Dave is right to seek to open up the Chinese market to British business. 

However, the sudden vigour with which he has suddenly discovered China after over three years in office suggests that dear old Angela has told him that now she is in bed with the EU-hugging German Left there will be no EU reform.  Britain could soon be on a slow boat to China via an EU exit.

Dave is not great with timing.  As he was selling Britain China was unilaterally deepening its dangerous dispute with Japan (and by extension the US) by declaring air space sovereignty over the disputed Daioyu/Senkaku islands.  By adding Britain to its now extensive collection of Europeans desperate for Chinese money it would thus be easy to conclude Beijing has neatly split and neutered the old West.

So, has China pulled off a strategic masterstroke?  No.  In fact China’s creeping and burgeoning assertive nationalism is in danger of putting at risk the very thing that has made China rich – globalisation.  Yes, beneath the East China Sea there could well be huge reserves of oil and gas that the Chinese economy desperately needs.  However, the islands dispute is not really about energy, it is about power.

China has become rich precisely because of the relatively stable international order the West, mainly the Americans, created.  In spite of efforts to boost domestic demand the enormous developmental challenges China faces (town/country split, ageing population etc. etc. etc.) China is more developing power than superpower.  China will need to export for years to come.

Given that the last thing that the Chinese economy needs is strategic turbulence and yet that is precisely what China is creating.  The disputed islands are like small pebbles dropped into an enormous strategic pool causing ripples across the world. 

What could be that impact?  Re-shoring is the simple answer.  On November 25^th the Financial Times ran a piece in which it said, “One in six UK companies has brought production back over the past year or is in the process of doing so suggesting re-shoring is starting to gain traction.  The number of companies returning production from countries such as China is outstripping those moving output overseas according to a survey of more than 500 small and medium-sized companies”. 

Re-shoring is gathering momentum across the West with many companies now abandoning Asia to return production to their home markets.  The FT piece suggests that cost of production, lack of quality and long lead times are the primary factors.  Research at the University of Tilburg also cites problems of communication to which add concerns about the cost and reliability of regulatory regimes in Asia.

Now, imagine China really steps up the heat on Japan.  What is now still a trickle of re-shoring would very rapidly become a flood.  In effect, China would be killing the Chinese goose that laid several million golden eggs as the one thing business cannot stand is strategic turbulence.  If China pushes too far its many claims across what it has unilaterally termed its far-ranging Economic Exclusion Zone the ‘cost’ of doing business with or in China could become too great and China’s export-led boom would rapidly end.

Perhaps dear old Dave is not as strategically-challenged as his lightweight premiership might suggest.  It may well be that China needs influential friends in the West as much as Dave needs China.  Perhaps that was what Premier Li meant when he talked of an “indispensable partnership” and there really will be some Chinese give as well as the more normal take.  I wonder if Dave told Li that Britain might leave the EU?

As for Manchester.  Thirty quid?  You must be joking.  Five at best and you can collect it yourself.  Bring a bag.

Julian Lindley-French