Canada in the World?

Ottawa, Canada. 12 June.  Two hundred years ago in 1814 what was then British North America burnt down the White House and with the help of British Regulars re-arranged much else in Washington.  The Americans had launched an ill-advised and haphazard invasion of British territory and were rightly taught a lesson about manners and neighbourly relations.  Today, Canada is one of the world’s richest, most secure and most neighbourly countries on the planet.  There are few if any threats that Canada faces and the American behemoth to the south offers Canadians protection by extension.  So, what role does Canada’s aspire to play in a rapidly changing and potentially very dangerous world?

My purpose in coming to green, leafy Ottawa has been to engage in two days of talks with senior Canadian foreign and defence officials on a range of strategy and security-related topics. My welcome is typically Canadian – honest, friendly and open.  Indeed, I make no attempt to mask the fact that I like and admire this country which has always ‘done its bit’ either as a faithful British dominion in former times, as a close American and British ally in two world wars or as an under-stated and yet effective NATO member.

Canadians have turned modesty into a strategic doctrine ‘oftentimes’ (as the say here) being at the very forefront of American and British-led campaigns.  Given little credit for their immense but under-stated sacrifice Canadians have seemed content to let others decide their strategic direction of travel.  Indeed, one only has to look at last week’s D-Day 70 commemorations to get a sense of the pivotal role played by Canada in Europe’s freedom and yet their determination not to make a fuss about it.  This was something reinforced in my mind during a visit to Ottawa’s magnificent war museum in which I had the honour of meeting two Canadian veterans.

And yet as I contemplate my visit I am still left with a very big question mark in my mind about Canada’s role in the world.  Indeed, it would be easy for Canadians to sit back and leave world peace to others.  Unlike many Western countries Canada need not fret about energy security as she sits on vast reserves of oil and gas.  However, that is not the Canadian way and one can feel the ‘what next’ question hanging over Ottawa.

Neither is there a willingness here to really confront just ‘what next’ could mean.  And. looked at strategically it is clear that the world and the political realism which again defines it will not leave Canada in peace.  Canada is a three ocean state two of which will be contested – the Arctic and the Pacific.  

  

The problem for Canada is that Ottawa has no tradition of looking at the world for itself and making the big, strategic choices such an analysis would force upon Canadians.  For so long others have either made Ottawa’s strategic choices or provided the strategic context for Canadian action.  However, with a US as uncertain and as uncertainly-led as at any time since the 1930s and with Europe in self-imposed, self-obsessed steep decline Canada must now think strategically for itself. 

Specifically, Canada must decide what it needs to do to renovate the crisis-ridden rules-based, institution-framed system Canada helped to build and which Canadians have done so much to maintain. The alliances and unions of the twentieth century are in danger of becoming rapidly parochial in the twenty-first.  Moreover, in the emerging world-wide web of democracies security will no longer pivot on Europe but on North America with Canada occupying a key position in a new West no longer a place but an idea.

Given the inherent modesty of this most congenial of countries the pragmatic, civil-military ethos that has infused much of Canada’s external engagements in the past fifteen years (and which have suited Canada and its sense of itself) will need to be replaced by something much more ambitious.  My sense however is that Canada will need to break out of the self-defeating denial about the scope and pace of strategic change if Ottawa is to meet the coming challenges of what is fast becoming a hyper-competitive strategic age.

This is not so much because Canada itself will be threatened but because the values that define Canada will need defending.  And here I see some very European complacency, particularly in defence policy.  With Canada’s defence expenditure down at around 1.1% GDP (in reality) almost half the NATO target of 2% GDP Canadians like to suggest that it is not how much one spends on defence but how one spends it.  That is of course right to a limited point.  However, it is equally true that 2% well-spent is better than 1% well-spent and Canada needs and can afford to set an example to other allies. However, the controversy here over the purchase of the F-35 fighter demonstrates a very profound uncertainty about just what the Canadian armed forces are for and by extension Canada’s level of strategic ambition (which is really what the politics of F-35 is all about).

Last night unable to sleep I read the 2008 Canada First Defence Strategy.  It is a decent albeit relatively light defence-strategic effort and certainly helped me back into unconsciousness. However, having read the Strategy I still could not work out what role Canada aspires to play.  Indeed, the Strategy seemed to start with a question that to my mind is wrong for such a serious, grown-up country - where does Canada fit in to the plans of others, particularly the United States?  Surely, the question Canadians need to answer is what role Canada in the twenty-first century? 

There is a also a deeper question Canada must again answer.  It is the question those marvellous Canadians answered very clearly on Juno Beach; to what are extent Canadians prepared to defend the liberal values which define this great country, where and how.  To answer that question Ottawa will need strategy, not just politics.

Julian Lindley-French

A united states of Europe yes, Mr President…

Alphen, Netherlands, 8 June. 

Dear Mr President, last Thursday you rather stridently suggested we British should stay in the EU.  However, you failed to give us your vision for the EU or how and why a more federal EU would and could be in the American interest.  Indeed, you seem to have absolutely no idea what continued membership of the EU would mean for Britain or indeed the United States if the current brick-by-brick federalism continues. 

Let me give you a flavour of EU virtual political reality An hour or so ago I watched German Member of the European Parliament and all-round Brussels uber-insider Elmar Brok on the BBC. Brok actually said with a straight face that in the 22 May European almost-Parliament elections the vote I cast for a centrist party was in the firm belief that his fellow uber-elitist and uber-federalist M. Jean Claude Juncker should be the next European Commission President.  No, I did not and nor would I ever.  Indeed, had I known that my vote would have been hijacked in such a way I simply would not have bothered and how good is that for democracy?  Sadly, that is the kind of elite political deceit that passes for EU democracy these days.

No doubt, Mr President, you have been buoyed by your friend David Cameron telling you he is confident he will succeed in reforming the EU and thus render Brussels more streamlined, more competitive and more accountable to its many peoples.  Don’t hold your breath, Mr President.  Indeed, if M. Juncker gets his way the only streamlining that will take place will be the expulsion of all but the most die-hard of federalists from the European Commission. And, Mr President, you could expect an acceleration of the Commission’s insidious efforts to further dismantle the European nation-state via the legislative backdoor amid bogus claims about the 'real' intent of the EU’s copious treaties.

The strange thing, Mr President, is a) you seem to think a super-EU would be in the American interest; and b) you would not countenance for a minute American membership of an organisation in which so many of the elite seek the end of an independent America.  And yet you insist Britain and its citizens accept such a fate.  Have you not learnt anything from standing on the beaches of Normandy?  Do you really think the tens of thousands of my countrymen who fought and died that day and the many days thereafter did so simply to end up as vassals of a democratically-challenged bureaucracy called the EU?   

So, Mr President rather than simply instructing we British to “make the right decision” you need to work with us on EU reform.  Ironically, that means supporting Britain not just in the EU but also in NATO.  Thank you indeed for last week’s European Reconstruction Initiative and the $1 billion you have so generously offered to improve continental Europe’s collapsing armed forces.  However, the fact you have had to offer even more American taxpayer’s money for Europeans to defend themselves surely should have told you something about the future strategic and political reliability of ‘Europe’.  Can you not see that one reason for the strategic-illiteracy of so many European leaders is that they are lost in the interminable other-world of the EU?

You also seem to think, Mr President, that by forcing Britain to stay in an unreformed EU that it will somehow lead to a ‘Union’ that is one and the same time strategically-responsible, politically reliable and militarily-capable.  In fact all you will achieve is a Britain that is just like the rest of the EU; strategically-incapable, politically-irresponsible and militarily-incapacitated.  Let’s face it we have not got far to go.  Is that what you really want, Mr President?

The problem, Mr President, is that on matters EU the White House sounds ever more like some soft left Brussels think-tank.  Now I know who and why but believe me, Mr President, your advisers are talking complete tosh.  Therefore, Mr President, it is time you saw clearly the EU’s coming crisis for what it is – Britain’s political D-Day.  The United States must therefore again join Britain to seek a Europe governed by states legitimised by the citizens who vote for them and an EU which serves such an end.  A state called ‘Europe’ is not in the American interest.  Worse, the US could face a Europe that hovers indefinitely between the two ‘finalités’, a political swamp into which Europeans are fast sinking. 

So, Mr President, it is time for you to come off the fence.  If you want Britain to stay in the EU you must make it perfectly clear that you agree with Prime Minister Cameron and that the United States will throw its weight behind his reform agenda.  You must also tell your friend Chancellor Merkel that a Juncker appointment as European Commission President is not in the American interest.

A united states of Europe yes Mr President.  A United States of Europe most definitely no.

Yours sincerely,

Julian Lindley-French

D-Day Today

D-Day. 6 June. 0430 hours Zulu. As I write 61,715 British troops alongside 57,500 Americans and some 21,500 Canadians supported by 6939 ships and craft of various sorts together with some 11,600 aircraft are three hours off the Normandy beaches.  They are together with the air, sea and land forces of many free nations – Australian, Belgian, Czech, Dutch, Greek, New Zealand, Norwegian, Polish and, of course, the Free French on their long, dangerous and distinguished way home. 

Just over four hours ago at 0015 hours 6 platoons of the 2^nd Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry attacked and took the critical bridge (Pegasus Bridge) over the Caen Canal that protects the eastern flank of the five landing beaches Gold, Juno, Sword, Omaha and Utah.  The glider-borne force landed less than 100 metres/150 yards from their target and by 0026 hours had sent the coded success signal “ham and jam”. 

At 0058 hours the 7^th (light infantry) Parachute Battalion of the British Army began the first of the massed American, British and Canadian drops of some 13000 paratroopers behind enemy defences to help secure the landing beaches.  And, in just over an hour at 0545 hours a massive naval bombardment will begin from the huge fleets off the beaches, which includes seven battleships 4 of which are British and 3 American.

At 0725 hours troops of the 50^th Northumbrian Division, 69^th and 231^st Brigades and the 8^th Armoured Brigade will be the first of the six American, British and Canadian infantry divisions to set foot on the beaches.  They are being preceded by Special Forces of the Special Boat Service and Royal Marine Commandos. 

Later today Prime Minister Winston Churchill will rise to speak in the House of Commons. “I have…to announce to the House that during the night and the early hours of this morning the first of the series of landings in force upon the European Continent has taken place. In this case the liberating assault fell upon the coast of France. An immense armada of upwards of 4,000 ships, together with several thousand smaller craft, crossed the Channel. Massed airborne landings have been successfully effected behind the enemy lines, and landings on the beaches are proceeding at various points at the present time”. 

Under the ‘Supreme’ command of US General Dwight D, Eisenhower Operation Overlord is a truly multinational effort.  The Allied Expeditionary Naval Forces is led by Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay of the Royal Navy, the air forces by RAF Air Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory and 21^st Army Group by General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery, victor of El Alamein.  

Seventy years on I had the honour Tuesday to watch Beating the Retreat on Horseguards Parade in central London as a guest of the First Sea Lord.  This is an ancient British military parade that was performed meticulously by the massed bands of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines, the band of the Royal Netherlands Navy and the band of the United States Marine Corps.  As I watched I reflected that my life today would not be possible without D-Day – I am a Brit, I am married to and live with the Dutch, I am a passionate believer in the United States and the continuing need for American leadership, I am soon off to Ottawa and I am a European.  To that end, the precision of the military bandsmen of three great democracies marching and wheeling around Horseguards reminded me of the enduring importance of the military alliance of the Western democracies forged on those magnificent but bloodied beaches.  Indeed, both NATO and the EU were born in Normandy.  

Later, as I looked down on Horseguards from the Duke of Wellington’s famous office with a nice glass of Royal Naval Chablis in my hand I was also struck by the enduring need for democratic values and liberties to be underpinned by hard military power in an unforgiving world.  Indeed, if there is one testament to the men who put their lives on the line on Normandy’s beaches it is that the West is no longer a place but an idea – a global idea that must be defended globally.  However, today as then sound defence means hard-nosed political realism and on occasions the same sad sacrifice by the same sort of young citizen-soldiers the bodies of whom could be seen strewn sadly across the D-Day beaches by the end of that fateful day. 

D-Day also holds a mirror up to today’s European leaders.  They should take a long, hard look into it as not a few of them gathering in Normandy today should do so in chagrin if not a little shame.  This week President Obama came to Europe to pledge yet more American money in defence of Europe.  America’s $1 billion European Reassurance Initiative will enhance the training, exercising and (vitally) education of NATO European forces whilst the 67,000 US military personnel currently stationed in Europe will be reinforced.  Frankly, as a European I felt a little ashamed by the President’s announcement.  Indeed, with only three Europeans currently spending the agreed NATO target of 2% GDP on defence (Britain, Greece and Estonia) it is shocking that in 2014 an American president should be giving American money to relatively rich Europe in pursuit of its own defence.  Echoes of the 1930s.

D-Day also reminds all of us engaged in security and defence of another strategic verity – the importance of the sea to our collective defence.  After a decade of land-centric operations in Afghanistan and Iraq it would be easy for military planners to try and fight the last war better.  That would be a mistake.  There will be no more Afghanistan-type operations in which small forces are sent into distant places at great expense for long periods in pursuit of uncertain political and social ends.  Indeed, with much of the world’s population moving ever closer to the sea and congregating in huge cities in the littoral much of future security will come ‘from the sea’. 

Therefore, D-Day is not some relic of irrelevant history but the marker for future coalitions of free peoples and a beacon of excellence (in spite of its many problems) for future operations. However, such lessons will resonate only so long as political and military leaders have the political courage and strategic vision to confront the many lessons D-day still has to teach us about will, intent, cohesion and innovation.

Above all, D-Day reminds of the need to stand up for what is right.  Clausewitz said that “War is the continuation of policy (politics) by other means”.  The presence of Germany’s Chancellor Merkel today on the Normandy beaches is testament to that.  Indeed, D-Day was about the liberation of all Europe including Germany from Nazism.  Dr Merkel’s presence today not only graces the commemoration but is powerful proof of a Germany that stands at the heart of Europe and the heart of freedom as a model democracy  - friend Germany, not enemy Germany. 

And, for all the current turbulence in the West’s relations with Russia and whatever one’s views on President Putin and his Machiavellian machinations one must never forget that the defeat of Nazism owes much to the sacrifice and suffering of the Russian and other peoples in Eastern Europe.  What a shame Moscow simply fails to grasp the possibilities for great (not Greater) Russia in a free Europe.  Apparently preferring instead to live in fear of freedom in a strange, new Cold World War in which no-one will win least of all Russia. 

In his D-Day message to the troops General Eisenhower wrote, “The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.  In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of the Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world”.

As the boots of those first American, British, Canadian and other troops set foot ashore on Normandy’s long, golden beaches democracy, liberty and security came with them.  It is therefore incumbent on the rest of us to ensure that neither democracy nor security is frittered away by those who too often seem to have forgotten that liberty can never be taken for granted and must be invested in then as now. 

Operation Overlord was quite simply stunning both in vision and commission.  A few years ago I stood on the cliffs above Arromanches looking down on Gold Beach where the famed British XXX Corps came ashore.  To my right lay Juno and Sword beaches and to my left the American beaches Omaha and Utah.  The sheer length of the front was stunning - some 100kms/60 miles in length.  However, D-day was not without cost and although by the end of D-Day the beaches were secured and the bridgehead on French soil established some 9000 Allied personnel lay dead killed-in-action.  Therefore, today must be seen for what it is; a day of remembrance for the American, British, Canadian and other forces that began Europe’s long journey back to democracy many never to return. 

How can we honour these brave, ordinary men and the veterans who still honour us and remind us with their presence?  We must complete a Europe whole and free and reinvest in the defence of liberty and democracy for which my grandfather and my great-uncle (killed) fought.

In November 1942 speaking of the British Commonwealth’s victory at El Alamein in Egypt Winston Churchill said, “This is not the end.  It is not even the beginning of the end.  It is, however, the end of the beginning”.  D-Day was the beginning of the end of World War Two in the European theatre of operations.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them.

Thank you, Gentlemen. 

Julian Lindley-French

Juncker: Why Cameron must stand up to Merkel

London, United Kingdom. 2 June.  “A face from the 1980s cannot solve the problems of the next five years”.  David Cameron’s comment about Jean-Claude Juncker puts London on a collision course with Germany.  Indeed, by supporting Luxembourg’s Jean-Claude Juncker to be the next European Commission (the EU’s Chief Executive) President German Chancellor Merkel has clearly decided to face down British Prime Minister David Cameron.  However, so averse is Cameron to a Juncker presidency that apparently (and for the first time) the Prime Minister has actually told Merkel Britain could leave the EU if Juncker is appointed.  So, who is Jean-Claude Juncker and why is Cameron so exercised?

The many quotes attributed to M. Juncker tell a worrying story. His protectionist instincts were apparent in 2006 when Indian steel giant Mittal was seeking to acquire Arcelor,  Juncker said, “I am determined, as is the [Luxembourg] Government, to do everything to preserve everything that we have worked for and that we believe in…by using all necessary mean to fend of the hostile”.

Juncker’s views on democracy are also well-documented.  In 2005 on the eve of the French referendum on the disastrous Constitutional Treaty Juncker said, “If it’s a Yes we will say ‘on we go’.  If it’s a No we will say ‘we continue’”.

He is a committed EU federalist and says so. “There is a single legal personality for the EU, the primacy of European law, a new architecture for foreign and security policy, there is an enormous extension in the fields of the EU’s powers…”  And, on the relationship between EU power and the people Juncker is clear, “We [political leaders] all know what to do, we just don’t know how to get re-elected after we’ve done it”.

On pushing forward the European project Juncker freely admits to conning the people. “We decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and see what happens. If no-one kicks up a fuss, because most people don’t understand what has been decided, we continue step-by-step until there is no turning back”. Indeed, in 2011 in the midst of the Eurozone crisis Juncker warned of the ‘dangers’ of political transparency.  “Monetary policy is a serious issue.  We should discuss this in secret, in the Eurogroup…I’m ready to be insulted as being insufficiently democratic, but I want to be serious…I am for secret, dark debates”.  Indeed, he told Die Brusseler Republik, “When it becomes serious, you have to lie”. 

However, Juncker perhaps left his ‘best’ and most duplicitous for Britain.  “Britain is different”.  He said, “Of course there will be transfers of sovereignty.  But would I be intelligent to draw the attention of public opinion to this fact?”

Juncker might head the strongest group in the European Parliament. However, the member-states (where real democracy in Europe still resides) are only duty bound to take the European Parliament’s candidates “into account”.  At heart this is a three-way power struggle between reformists and federalists and between federalists in the European Parliament and the member-states in the European Council.  It is also a struggle between Germany and Britain (and others) over German power and influence in the EU.

For Chancellor Merkel to back Jean-Claude Juncker for such an important position at this particular moment when so many millions of Europeans have protested against a distant EU looks for all-the-world like good-old-fashioned arrogance.  Indeed, it suggests a German view of EU integration built on the political principle that all other EU member-states should integrate around Germany with Brussels merely Berlin’s agent. 

There are three other candidates (as yet undeclared) who might offer the balanced leadership and compromise between reform and stability Brussels and the paying member-states that the EU desperately needs.  These are Denmark’s Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny and the Head of the International Monetary Fund Christine Lagarde.

If Jean-Claude Juncker is appointed to President of the European Commission it would not only be a slap in the face for Britain.  It would send the strongest signal yet that democracy in the EU is just theatre and that whatever the people vote the EU elite will carry on with business as usual.  Eurogroup chairman and twice President of the European Council Juncker is the ultimate EU patrician and long-term elite insider and represents all that is wrong with today’s EU.  He combines the arch EU-federalism, small-minded protectionism and archetypal elitism that has done so much to create the hollowed-out democracy that is today’s Europe.  The already yawning democratic-deficit under a Juncker presidency would only deepen.

Jean-Claude Juncker believes the EU and its people must be driven towards his ‘finalité’; a European super-state.  His job as Commission President would be to push Europeans by hook or by crook towards his ‘vision’.  As such ‘President’ Juncker would seek to undermine the autonomy of the member-states by extending the ‘competence’ of the European Commission via a maximalist interpretation of the Lisbon Treaty and the progressive concentration of power in a few elite Brussels’ hands.

The only way to stop Juncker is for Prime Minister Cameron to come out of the euro-realist closet and take a stand.  He must tell Chancellor Merkel that should this man be appointed Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom will actively campaign for Britain’s departure from the EU.  If he fails to do so then Juncker will systematically block any EU reform Cameron seeks and a return to the subsidiarity that Cameron is championing would be strangled at birth.

The one thing that can perhaps be said in Jean-Claude Juncker’s favour is that he is open about both his beliefs and his methods. There are too many EU leaders who prefer to operate completely in the shadows.  However, as an unabashed euro-fanatic, Juncker would bethe wrong man, in the wrong place at very much the wrong time.  

Don't just take Juncker's words for it.  Speaking of Juncker in 2005 US President George W. Bush allegedly said, “I was going to say he [Juncker] is a piece of work, but that might not translate too well.  Is that alright if I call you a piece of work?” 

M. Juncker is indeed a face from the 1980s and far from solving the EU’s myriad problems as President of the European Commission he would inevtitably make them far, far worse.

Jobs for the boys?

Julian Lindley-French

The NATO Club

2BS Conference, Budva, Montenegro. 31 May. Budva lies cupped in the clasped hands of a rocky giant nestling in a deep bay alongside the azure Adriatic.  This is a beautiful place in a beautiful country waiting its patient turn to take its full and definitive place in a Europe whole and free – something the rest of us too often take for granted.  Indeed, the powerful 2BS (to be secure) conference at which I am writing this blog is by its very existence a reminder of a Europe as yet unfinished.  Something of which the stupor-awakening fate of Ukraine this year is all too eloquent.  Montenegro waits in hope and expectation that along with three other aspirant states membership of NATO will be offered at the Wales Summit in September. So, what does it mean to be a member of NATO in 2014?

Perhaps the best way for me to answer that question is to admit something I have been trying to keep secret; I am a golfer. Now, I am not a very good golfer.  Indeed, I am probably what one might term a Scud missile golfer – good range, no direction.  In fact I play what can best be described as Beatles golf with each round a Magical Mystery Tour that takes me to exotic places on courses hitherto undiscovered.  Indeed, if I got a pound for each shot I hit I would be a very rich man indeed.

NATO is a kind of golf club.  There is the one really rich bloke who has the money all the latest golf kit and can indeed play.  However, he tends to wear loud trousers (or ‘pants’ which to the rest of us are a form of underwear) and talks a lot.  Then there are a couple of newly-rich who have gone out and bought the kit, but cannot play and rarely turn up.  For them what matters is being seen alongside the rich bloke from time-to-time even if they find golf rather distasteful.

 

There are one or two old, snobbish formerly rich members who can still play (although they are getting on a bit).  However, they do not like the way the club is changing and in any case can no longer really afford to play.  For them hiding the fact of their decline is what matters even if the state of their ageing kit is a dead giveaway. 

The bulk of the paying members are made up of the aspirant middle class for whom membership is all about, well, membership.  They cannot really play at all and can only afford a few clubs. However, membership gives them a real sense of social standing denied their parents.  

Finally, there are a few young members who are absolutely broke, hang around the club house but given half the chance would be all too happy play with a bit of tuition.  Sadly, they are routinely ‘bumped’ by the older, richer members who hog the course, make a mess of it, a nuisance of themselves and turn golf into a form of trench warfare.

Then there are the people who would love to get into the club if only the committee would deem them worthy of access.  These poor people are placed on interminable waiting lists and often given long, stern lectures about the club’s values, traditions and ‘standards’ which members are 'required' to uphold.  Of course not one of the members actually uphold the values or the standards of the club. And, if one took a careful look at the true financial status of not but a few it would reveal the dangerous relationship between snobbery, bankruptcy and golf. 

NATO faces a choice.  The great age of enlargement is ending and a new age of strategic engagement is beginning.  One only has to see how Russia is extending its soft influence again into places like Serbia to realise the relationship between Open Door enlargement and strategic engagement.  Those seeking membership cannot be kept waiting indefinitely to join either the NATO or EU clubs, although the EU club has so many rules and regulations that no-one actually ever plays golf - they just talk about it.  

Some of these aspirants may be a bit rough round the edges and have table manners that may leave something to be desired.  That said, one only has to see the manners of the rich, loud bloke with the loud pants to realize that the great uncouth can also be found within the club house.  However, because he has real money he is routinely forgiven.  Where did he get those 'pants'.

The Wales Summit was meant to be the Partnership Summit.  It has been hijacked and rightly so by the Ukraine crisis.  However, partnership must mean something and if the Alliance is to be a club made fit for the twenty-first century it will need young, new members.  Indeed, once membership is offered then not only will the ability of the Montenegros of his Europe to play improve but a whole host of other manners will also be finessed – democracy, governance, rule of law and anti-corruption.

For all the hypocrisy and hubris at my golf club at the end of the day we are all golfers – good, bad, rich, poor and utterly rubbish. We are also members of the same club. If we fail to offer membership to the young and upcoming there is always the danger they will go and join another club which observes no rules at all!

Julian Lindley-French

Europe: A House Divided…

Vienna Airport, Austria 29 May. On June 16, 1858 Abraham Lincoln made a prophetic speech.  “A house divided against itself cannot stand.  I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half-slave, half-free.  I do not expect the Union to be dissolved…but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other”.  I have taken a few days to consider the implications of last week’s elections to the European Parliament.  Indeed, amidst the exaggerated talk of ‘earthquakes’ and ‘revolutions’ only two votes are of real significance. First, some 70% of those Europeans who did vote cast their ballot for pro-EU parties.  Second, 52% of Britons who voted cast their ballot for Euro-sceptic or Euro-rejectionist parties.  Therefore, there will be more political integration and the great British reckoning will soon be upon us in which the choice for the British people will be surrender or leave.

No clear theme emerges from a close analysis of the voting patterns.  Yes, the Front National made stunning gains in France but the French are not about to abandon the EU. Yes, AFD, a small German party made a splash but they are anti-Euro, not anti-EU.  Yes, there were significant gains for various extremists, bigots and zealots across the political spectrum.  However, taken together there is nothing that could be said to be the basis for a reasoned and reasonable opposition with the European Parliament save (ironically) for some of the more modern and grown-up members of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP).

That said the EU is at a crossroads. However, it is perhaps not the one that much of media is somewhat hysterically claiming.  The EU political elite is right to claim that much of the opposition is driven by a lack of economic growth but criticism also goes beyond that to issues of governance which of course the elite do not want to consider.  It is not surprising that they are happy to look again at policies but not at themselves. 

The voting patterns also reveal a profound split between the relatively few northern and western European taxpayers who fund Project Europe and those across the rest of Europe who benefit from such largesse.  Given that these transfers will continue for many years to come such discontent will also persist.  However, it is unlikely to reach a level where the existence of the Union itself is threatened.  Even though such transfers are in effect a tax on western European growth the EU elite make sure the Eurozone voter has nowhere else to go.

The EU elite also refuses to acknowledge the economic and social friction caused by huge numbers of poor eastern and southern Europeans arriving en masse in western European societies. Wages have been suppressed and cultural frictions have been generated.  Equally, those against free movement frequently shoot themselves in their collective feet by trying to paint migrants as a host of barbarians.  From first-hand experience I can confirm such a caricature is not at all fair.  However, to dismiss such concerns as racism is not just plain wrong but highlights and deepens the profound gap between the elite and the people the EU has come to represent for millions.

Where the vote really does matter is in the UK.  This reflects not just the growing gap between Britain and the Eurozone but also a lack of trust between political leaders and the British people. It is a lack of trust reinforced by the utter impossibility – political and financial- of the UK’s current position in the EU. 

The bottom line is this; Britain sends £8.6 billion per year (net) to the EU and gets precious little back in return.  The London political elite say such transfers give Britain access to the Single Market.  However, not only does Germany block the completion of a Single Market in Services the one area where Britain is strong but under World Trade Organisation rules the British are in effect paying for access to what should be free markets. 

Indeed, if anything the mass of EU Regulation makes the Single Market not only less ‘single’ but also not at all free. Therefore, that £8.6bn per annum is in effect a foreign tax on the British people and reflects what has been for too long blind faith in the EU on the part of the London political elite. As the EU and the Eurozone becomes one and the same thing the British will sooner or later have to face reality; join the euro or leave the EU.

So, what is going to happen? First, a mainstream Continental Christian Democrat will become President of the European Commission in November. Berlin wants that and the Eurozone is in effect a zollverein (customs union) built on and for Germany. It will probably not be arch-federalist Jean-Claude Juncker as that would indeed be red rag to John Bull.  Second (and however) the British will become even more euro-sceptic.  The current EU is just about defensible by the likes of Cameron, Clegg and Miliband.  However, as the Eurozone inevitably moves towards real monetary and political union the gap between the benefits of Britain’s EU membership and the costs will become even more apparent. 

Third, the various new factions in the European Parliament will spend more time fighting each other than holding the Commission to account.  Fourth, a hybrid form of political union will emerge as the Commission in effect becomes Germany’s proxy and continues its efforts to undermine and eventually replace every other EU member-state as the effective Government of Europe.  

Given that set of scenarios the likelihood that Cameron can persuade Eurozone governments of the need to go back to a kind of pre-Maastricht EU built on state-led structural ‘subsidiarity’ is extremely unlikely.  Indeed, structural subsidiarity would not be possible without the scrapping of both the Lisbon Treaty and the euro and that ain’t going to happen.

As for Europe’s people – they will continue in their current state; half slaves, half free half served by the half democracy that the half Parliament of the EU has become.  And, when all the brouhaha has died down elite business in the EU will continue just as elite usual.

Ho hum!

Julian Lindley-French

HMS Victory and Europe's Strategy Crisis

Alphen, Netherlands. 26 May.  She is quite simply the most famous warship in the world.  Admiral Lord Nelson’s flagship at the epoch-making 1805 Battle of Trafalgar Victory sits at the heart of Portsmouth naval base, a “wooden wall of England” even today exuding power and naval majesty. Half her one hundred and four guns point protectively, poignantly and defiantly towards the Continent.  Still the Fleet Flagship of the First Sea Lord (Head of the Royal Navy) Victory is the very symbol of both British naval power and Britain's past grand strategic influence.  As such Victory is so much more than a ship.

Dining Friday on Victory with First Sea Lord Admiral Sir George Zambellas at the Chiefs of European Navies (CHENS) conference Victory spoke to me.  Whatever the politics of Europe (and there has been a distinct outbreak of politics this past week) unless Europeans can together face the hard strategic reality Nelson’s grand old ship was built to confront Europe could in time face disaster in this fast-coming, fast-dangerous age. 

In that spirit I put four questions to the assembled Band of Brothers.  Are we Europeans credible as a strategic community?  Are European navies ready and able to fight a war?  Have European governments and their armed forces gripped the sheer pace and scale of change?  Can Europeans embrace the mind-set change twenty-first century grand and defence strategy demands?  To each question the response was a deafening and very strategic silence, save for two British senior officers who perhaps felt I was rocking the boat just a tad too much.  Moi?

Strategic logic would suggest that as the balance of military power begins to shift decisively away from Europe and if European governments are not prepared to spend more on defence (which they are for the mostpart not) they must do more together.  Unfortunately, the meeting revealed all too clearly the barriers to such co-operation and the extent to which politics is polluting strategy. 

To open the meeting Britain’s Secretary-of-State for Defence Phillip Hammond made all the right noises.  Future threat will be demanding and the maritime component vital.  He rightfully talked about the challenge of affording cutting-edge capabilities. It is indeed impressive how Hammond has in a short space of time re-established some level of prudent financial discipline and sound project management in Britain’s infamously inept and shambolic defence procurement process. 

However, whilst celebrating the launch of the new British super-carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth on 4 July (Independence Day?) Hammond was strangely quiet about the fate of the second super-carrier HMS Prince of Wales.  Moreover, that very day Hammond engaged in a spat with the Labour Party that I may have triggered over Britain’s (an island) lack of a capable and vital maritime patrol aircraft.  Instead of focusing on how best to close this dangerous capability gap the Secretary-of-State wrote to The Times to engage in an utterly pointless debate about who actually was responsible for cutting the programme and when.

Next, EU Commissioner Maria Damanaki made a speech in which she called for a “European Maritime Security Framework”.  On the face of it such a Framework makes perfect sense.  In reality this was yet another attempt by the European Commission to marginalise the European nation-state and use insidious function to expand the EU’s power footprint and the Commission’s power.  The debate over where co-operation should take place has added to the paralysis that is affecting the vital need for European defence cohesion.  Indeed, in the Commissioner's remarks there was a clear whiff of a future European Navy.

There was however another HMS Elephant in the room – trust.  The wonderfully-named HMS Elephant was Nelson’s flagship at the 1801 Battle of Copenhagen at which the Danes had their fleet somewhat deconstructed for failing to unequivocally understand that Denmark needed to be on the British side in the Napoleonic Wars.  Silly people!  If Victory is an historic metaphor for decisive leadership Elephant is a metaphor for trust, or rather the lack of it.

For European armed forces to be credible across the twenty-first mission spectrum from the low-end to the high-end and across time and distance a profound and radical shift in strategy, ambition and posture will be required.  And yet I saw no evidence of such a fundamental mind-set shift in the making. Put simply, Europeans will only invest in each when they are certain that it really is all-for-one and one-for-all rather than the current 'after you please' approach to crisis management.

Worse, after a bruising decade of struggle in Afghanistan and Iraq, a massive economic crisis and deep, deep defence cuts military leaders in many European states are simply despair of their political leaders and at a loss of what to do about it.  This week the chiefs of France’s armed forces threatened to resign en masse if Paris added cuts of a further €2bn per annum to those already agreed in 2013.  On the brand-new state-of-the-art destroyer HMS Dragon I had lunch with Admiral Rogel, Chief of Staff of the French Navy.  The Admiral struck me as a very sensible man with both vision and drive.  For French Service Chiefs to threaten such a step there is clearly something very badly wrong.

What to do?  If Europeans are to shape the twenty-first century rather than become victims of it they must together return to strategic first principles. That means a focus on the development of advanced military capabilities whilst at the same time preserving a modicum of political flexibility such capabilities would afford.  

Critically, for all the whingeing and wining of other Europeans Britain and France remain the key European powers.  If the two countries can forge a real strategic partnership then there is a chance that other Europeans will begin to organise themselves around such a pole of military power whatever flag such a force operates under. 

Leadership by example will be vital.  Therefore, both countries must fulfil all their capability pledges and London and Paris must make the funding available to do so however hard that might be.  Indeed, if London really does cut or simply park HMS Prince of Wales indefinitely then the British can effectively say goodbye to the defence leadership of Europe.  Like Victory the 2 ‘QEs’ are not just warships they are symbols of strategic ambition and influence. 

There were two other elephants in the room which by their presence suggested an increased need for effective European defence co-operation.  Two senior American admirals reminded the Europeans present of the deep paradox at the heart of transatlantic relations; the more strategically-irresponsible Europeans retreat from sound defence the greater their dependence on an increasingly over-stretched and despairing United States. 

Sadly, I am not hopeful.  Such is the strategic and political denial of the political elite and the endemic short-termism with which they are afflicted that defence under-investment in Europe is now the very DNA of declinism.  Indeed, one would have thought given Russia’s aggression in Ukraine that European leaders would finally be ready to wake up and smell the defence coffee.  Not a bit of it.  Europeans politicians are fast retreating from any such ideas firm in their fantasy that the Americans will always be there to protect them.  In future there is a very good chance they will not.

HMS Victory is famous for what she represents – strategic ambition, political will and fighting power. Nelson’s victory ushered in two centuries of not just British naval power but British and American grand strategic power.  And in time the values the two countries came to espouse as they eventually forged the West.  Today, that supremacy is being ended before my eyes with history on steroids.  This is partly due to the emergence of China and the military re-emergence of Russia.  However, the main culprit is a European refusal to confront the implicit grand strategic test of which Victory speaks and which in reality CHENS was about. 

Europe will not find its place in the world until Europeans face up to the world as it is, not as they would like it to be. For that to happen Britain, France and the rest of Europe must really decide what kind and level of actor they want to be and if they really want to play power any more.  My sense is not.  Prove me wrong.

Julian Lindley-French  

China and Russia: Wind, Gas and Strategy

Alphen, Netherlands. 21 May. In 1957 at the height of Soviet power Chinese leader Mao Zedong made a prediction.  “It is my opinion that the international situation has now reached a new turning point. There are two winds in the world today, the East Wind and the West Wind. There is a Chinese saying, "Either the East Wind prevails over the West Wind or the West Wind prevails over the East Wind." I believe it is characteristic of the situation today that the East Wind is prevailing over the West Wind”.  Behind the civilities of Russian President Putin’s state visit to China this week is hard grand strategic calculation by both Beijing and Moscow that will shape the adversarial grand politics of the early twenty-first century.

This week’s gas supply deal with Russia and the hard bargain China has driven demonstrate two important Chinese strategic principles.  First, China accepts that implicit in Russia’s use of Machopolitik in Ukraine is a new East-West Machtpolitik stand-off.  Second, Russia is no equal but part of China’s growing sphere of influence.  Indeed, with Russia having abandoned the West China is fully aware that Russia is in a weak strategic position in desperate need to reduce its reliance on Europe for 80% of its energy sales. 

Moscow is at a strategic crossroads.  Russia could at this point still seek to mend its relations with the West, Europe in particular.  Moscow could signal that what has happened in Crimea was forced upon it by circumstances and that Russia is still open to a political settlement that would confirm Ukraine’s sovereign rights but protect both Russian-speaking minorities and the fleet base at Sevastopol.

Instead Russia is further upping the anti-Western ante and signalling by the nature and the tone of Putin’s visit to China that the breach with the West is structural and permanent.  This is reinforced by Russia’s deployment of state-of-the-art Bastion P 330K anti-ship missiles to Crimea. By so doing (and given the recent cruise of the aircraft-carrier Kuznetsov) Moscow’s ambition is to rebuild the Russian Navy into an anti-Western blue water fleet albeit focused on the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.  This was clearly the message in the joint naval exercises conducted this week with China. 

China has different motivations.  Whilst Moscow shares China’s classical balance of power, sphere of influence world view the respective levels of ambition of the two powers are markedly different.  Russia’s strategy is inherently defensive in its far east and regional-strategic in its near-West.  China on the other hand is preparing to take on the US and its allies in South and East Asia.  Russia is attractive as a satellite because it forces an America with a declining defence budget to look two ways at once thus complicating US strategic calculation.

Equally, China is still willing to bide its time until what it sees as the correlation of forces are more in its favour.  However, Beijing’s sharp response to US charges of cyber-espionage against five Chinese military officers is indicative of what is to come.  Chinese state cyber-espionage against all Western powers (civil and military) is rife and getting more so.  For the time-being China is satisfied to extend its sphere of influence through the use of intimidation of its East and South Asian neighbours testing American resolve and tiring capabilities.  However, it is clear; in the Chinese strategic mind a day of reckoning with America will come.

For the West these shifting strategic tectonics imply profound dilemmas.  First, only the United States (and only part of the US) is prepared to see the new order for what it is – big, dangerous and adversarial.  Second, America’s key allies are in utter denial about the implications of such strategic shift over the medium-to-long term. 

Even Britain, long America’s staunchest strategic ally continues to view defence as a function of accountancy rather than strategy.  This week’s crisis in the Atlantic has revealed just how hollowed-out the Royal Navy in particular has become.  According to Global Firepower the Royal Navy, a century ago by the far the most powerful navy is now the world’s 36^th largest force – modern ships but not enough of them.  And the lack of a capable maritime patrol aircraft that could have assisted in the search for the lost British sailors was cut four years ago by the Government even as it was being built. For Britain not to have a capable maritime patrol aircraft is not only absurd it is perverse.

As for the rest of Europe they are either incapable, unwilling or both.  Indeed, a poll this week of German public opinion revealed just how difficult Europe’s most important power finds facing up to the new strategic realities.  The German public are still essentially pacifist.  Consequently, there is a strategic black hole in the heart of Europe that will continue to mean Europeans punch well below their respective weight on the twenty-first century world stage.  And all this just as America really needs allies.

Not without irony it is perhaps the Russians who need most to understand the price they are about to pay.  There may be patriotic hoopla in Moscow today over the annexation of Crimea but over the longer-term it could prove to have been a disastrous move.  China will certainly not hesitate to exploit a needy Russia.  As he was welcomed by President Xi Putin described China as Russia’s “reliable friend” and pointedly referred to China as Russia’s major trading partner.  Any analysis of history reveals the first statement to be untrue – China has never been Russia’s reliable friend.  And, whilst the second statement is factually correct the gas deal reveals the fundamental tension in the Chinese-Russian relationship; China no longer regards Russia as an equal let alone a leader. 

If Western politicians could stop confusing politics with strategy they would realise the importance of the moment and what it means for longer-term world stability and defence.  America cannot continue to cut its defence budget and if NATO is to mean anything to Americans nor can Britain or the rest of Europe. 

That is the message carried on the east wind from Beijing and Moscow.  And it is a bitter wind that will blow only harder in what is a slowly gathering storm.

Julian Lindley-French 

SOS: Thank you America...Now Britain and Europe Must Act!

Alphen, Netherlands. 20 May. I have just been given the wonderful news that the US Coastguard will resume its search for our four British lads lost at sea.  Thank you, America!  You are a great friend to have. And my sincere thanks to those brave USCG crews who in the coming hours will risk their lives to save four of my compatriots.  My heart will be with you on this difficult and dangerous mission.

Now it is the turn of Britain and Europe.  Britain - we must get all and any assets we have out there and fast.  Spain, please make the bases on the Azores available and join the search.  France; a few of your enhanced Atlantiques would be deeply appreciated to help lead the search.  These men are after all EU citizens and now is a chance for Europe to prove it!

Let me conclude with Sir Francis Drake's prayer (no offence to my Spanish friends):

Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.
Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.
We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.

God speed and good hunting!

Julian Lindley-French

SOS: Save Our Sailors

Alphen, Netherlands. 20 May.  As I write somewhere, out in mid-Atlantic four Britons could be tenaciously clinging onto the last lease of life firm in their belief that someone is searching for them. They are probably wrong and have been left to die.  

The thought of Andrew Bridge, Paul Goslin, James Male and Steve Warren struggling for life as they slowly die of dehydration and hyperthermia whilst governments on both sides of the Atlantic 'have consultations' but publicly say and do nothing is not only appalling it is utterly inexcusable. 

The petition for a resumed search now runs to over 100,000 signatures.  Jeremy Hunt, the Secretary of State for Health has joined the call.  Legendary solo round-the-world sailor Sir Robin Knox-Johnson says they could still be alive and has joined the call. And yet the silence of the American and British Governments is deafening.   

Yes, a search would be difficult because the four men's yacht Cheeki Rafiki appears to have lost its keel some 1000 nautical miles off Cape Cod.  And yes there is a chance the men have already perished. However, the search falls in the area of responsibility of the United States Coastguard part of the world's most advanced military.  

Moreover, all the evidence suggests these four experienced sailors managed to get into their state of the art life-raft and engaged not one but two rescue beacons.  The US Coastguard says that it uses a sophisticated model that considers age, experience, time and conditions to decide survivability.  Sod the model!   There are several tales from World War Two of torpedoed sailors with far less survival equipment surviving for longer in even more inclement weather.   

What is particularly galling is that both the American and British Governments put an immense effort into trying to find the lost Malaysian airliner MH370 when all hope was lost.  London sent a nuclear submarine and HMS Echo to help with the search even though no British citizens were involved.

Calling off the search after three days in mid-May smacks not of impossibility but bureaucratic and political indifference to the fate of four British citizens. It is tragically ironic how willing British governments are to get involved in MH270 type incidents when foreigners are involved.  It is after all good for strategic communications.  However, London seems indifferent to the fate of four Britons.  And I really wonder if the US would have called off the search so early if the sailors had been American.

I hope I am wrong and things really are being done behind the scenes to try and find these four men. And I have been assured at the highest levels that such efforts are being made to save the men. However, over the past 24 critical hours I see absolutely no evidence of that.

If it transpires that the search was abandoned simply because the fate of the crew of Cheeki Rafiki fell either in the 'not our problem' or the 'too difficult to try' box then someone, somewhere should and hopefully will pay a price.  I doubt it.

To call off the search so early is utterly unacceptable.  The search for the four men must be resumed forthwith!

SOS: Save Our Sailors!

Julian Lindley-French