The Iran Nuclear Accord: Briefing & Assessment

Alphen, Netherlands. 16 July. The “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” agreed on 14 July in Vienna between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the E3/EU+3 states: “The E3/EU3+3 (China, France, Germany, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States, with the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy) with the Islamic Republic of Iran welcomes the historic Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which will ensure that Iran’s nuclear programme will be exclusively peaceful, and mark a fundamental shift in their approach to this issue”.  Whilst the JCPOA concerns the nature and scope of Iran’s ambitions to build nuclear weapons the Accord is also about contemporary geopolitics and the regional-strategic security and stability of the Middle East. 

The Accord: The JCPOA is 159 pages long which attests to its complexity and builds on the November 2013 Geneva Accord or Joint Plan of Action.  The main aim of the Accord is to reaffirm the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as the essential benchmark for preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to so-called non-nuclear weapons states (NNWS). Under the agreement Iran is to be transformed from a so-called ‘threshold state’ into a NNWS. Central to the Accord are strengthened safeguards and a verification and inspection regime that is intrusive even if it stops short of ‘no warning inspections’.

Specific Measures: The focus of the Accord is on preventing the weapons-grade enrichment of both uranium 235 and plutonium.  Uranium enrichment will be curtailed by reducing the number of operational centrifuges from 19,000 to 5000 and limiting Iran to the use of short lifespan first generation centrifuges.  Medium-enriched uranium will be rendered unfit for use in weapons.  Some 9700 kg of Iran’s 10,000 kg low-enriched uranium will also be shipped abroad.  Fordow, one of two main research and development sites, will cease all enrichment and become a physics research centre with no access to fissile material for at least 15 years.  The Arak heavy water reactor vital to the development of weapons grade plutonium will have its core destroyed and Iran will seek no heavy water production again for at least 15 years.

Verification and Inspection: Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) inspectors will have the right to inspect so-called ‘suspicious facilities’.  The so-called Safeguards Regime is based on but more extensive than those agreed under the NPT.  However, the inspectors will be unable to carry out snap exercises.  Iran will also be required to address so-called “possible military dimensions” of its nuclear programme. 

Sanctions Relief: In return for compliance with the terms of the Accord the EU, US and United Nations Security Council will lift a range of trade sanctions and unfreeze some $150bn of Iranian oil assets currently held in foreign banks.  However, sanctions relief is linked to Iran’s compliance over time and thus will take place in stages.  Critically, there will be no complete relief from sanctions until the agreement has been implemented in full and the Arak reactor destroyed.  There is a strong ‘snap back’ regime in place that allows for sanctions to be re-imposed quickly if the Accord is breached and without a further UNSC Resolution.

Analysis: A key phrase in the Accord reads, “They [the Parties to the Accord] anticipate that full implementation of this JCPOA will contribute to regional and international peace and security”.  Indeed, the Accord reflects a rapidly changing region and wider world and a battle over the conduct of international relations that goes far beyond the issue of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Specifically, a global struggle is underway over between a legalised order and Machtpolitik and between globalisation and Islamisation. 

In Iran there is clearly some tension between relative moderates around President Rouhani who believe that Iran’s changing society must accommodate itself with globalisation and hard-liners in and around the powerful Revolutionary Guard who see themselves as the guardians of the 1979 Revolution.  However, it would be far too simplistic to suggest there is a split between Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and President Rouhani.  Iran remains first and foremost an Islamic Republic with clerical power still the deciding force in Iranian policy-making.  The Accord would seem to reflect an accommodation between the two factions both of which believe they can gain.

Tehran has signed up to the Accord because it it believes it has the upper hand in the struggle for regional dominance in the Middle East.  Indeed, Persian Iran is at one and the same time confident in its ability to influence the by and large Arab region in which it sits.  Equally, Shia Tehran is deeply concerned by the rise of Sunni Islamic State and pragmatists clearly believe some form of accommodation will be needed with all anti-IS forces across the region.  However, a temporary suspension of competition with peer competitors such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States does not mean that competition over regional-strategic supremacy has been postponed indefinitely.  Indeed, suspension of Iran’s nuclear ambitions over the short-term would help forge an implicit anti-IS ‘coalition’ which perversely could help weaken regimes such as the Saudi monarchy because of the split within the Arab-Sunni world that would ensue between leaders and led. Iran is also fully aware that Saudi money paid for much of Pakistan’s nuclear programme and Riyadh is quite capable of rapidly becoming a nuclear power should the Accord falter. 

Israel is of course key. There is as yet no sign that the Accord will lead to a shift in Tehran on its long-standing and extreme hostility to Israel.  Indeed, with significant funds about to be released to Iran one of the key tests of of the Accord concerns the impact it will have on wider Iranian policy.  If Hezbollah is restocked and re-supplied and President Assad in Syria bolstered it will be clear that Iran is just as committed as ever to an eventual showdown with Israel and that hard-liners still drive much of Iranian foreign policy.  However, if that money instead goes into supporting the hard-pressed Iranian population then some moderating of Iran’s position may be underway.

The geopolitics of the Accord are equally fascinating. After a bruising couple of years which saw Russia use force in Ukraine and China seize territory (and build it) in the South China Sea the Accord demonstrates that a legalised systems of international relations is still workable and that some semblance of ‘international community’ still exists.  Arms control (for that is what the Accord is) is unlike disarmament in that whilst the latter is part of an ideal the former is a pragmatic function of security and defence policy, i.e. the more arms are limited by accord the less likely they will be built and the more likely legal solutions to disputes will be sought.  The world is in the balance between a treaty-based system of world order and a new balance of power. The Accord is a modest but important step back from the brink of Real and Machtpolitik and new regional and global arms races and a strengthening of the regimes and international institutions that underpin a legalised world order.

Assessment: As ever with such accords the devil will be in the demonstrable upholding of the detail with political and strategic implications that go far beyond the many technical pages of the Accord.  It Iran adheres to the Accord in full some semblance of trust will be established which in time may allow for the establishment of shared interests and actions.  If Iran seeks to use the very detail of the Accord to split the fractious coalition that negotiated it then the there is a very real danger of treaty breakout and a defection that will make the current fragile situation even worse. 

President Obama is surely right to make the effort implicit in the Accord for all the reasons laid out above.  However, neither the White House nor the EU powers can dismiss the stated concerns of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.  This Accord might not be the “historic mistake” he claims it to be but unless a clear determination to uphold it to the letter is apparent from Day One then the very real danger exists that Iran will out-manoeuvre a naïve Administration and a Europe that really does not want to be bothered right now.  As former US President Teddy Roosevelt once said, now is the time to speak softly but carry a big stick.

Julian Lindley-French  

‘aGreekment’: Facts and Implications

Alphen, Netherlands. 14 July. Bastille Day. This day back in 1789 the French people rose up and toppled the ancien regime.  Two hundred and twenty-six years on and it is the day after an attempt by another populist movement to challenge elite orthodoxy was firmly put in its place by Europe’s ancien regime.  In a ‘masterstroke’ of elite linguistic clunkiness European Council President Donald Tusk called the accord an “aGreekment’. It was certainly an abasement – of both debtor and creditors – and reflected the many contradictions of both the Greeks and the Euro itself.  What are the facts and the implications of this latest Euro-mess? 

The facts. Greece will receive a third massive bailout of my Dutch tax money worth some €85bn over three years to prevent state bankruptcy in return for first agreeing (this week) and then implementing (under imposed supervision) massive (and I mean massive) reforms. Indeed, wholesale change is demanded to the Greek tax base, legal system, levels and system of pensions, labour markets, public sector, public administration, financial sector and economy.

There will be an ‘independent asset fund’ established via the sell-off of Greek public assets such as ports and airports which it is hoped will raise €50bn and which will be overseen by the creditor institutions – the European Commission, European Central Bank (ECB), and International Monetary Fund (IMF).  Thereafter, €25bn will be used to recapitalise the Greek banks, €12.5bn will be invested in reducing the Greek debt-to-GDP ratio, and a further €12.5bn committed to investments in Greece itself.

There is as yet no agreement to offer Greece relief on its enormous €320bn debt. However, given that Greece can never escape from the debt trap without debt relief the latest bailout only makes sense if relief is eventually offered. In practical terms that will mean all of my money the Dutch Government pretended it was loaning to the Greeks in bailouts 1 and 2 (and now this new ‘loan’) will at some point be turned into gifts.  Money that was also used to indemnify German, French and other banks and which I am also paying for through the low interest on my savings, high taxes and the debasing of the Euro through so-called quantitative easing – printing money.

Greek debt management will be undertaken by extending the democratic deficit.  Critically, under the ‘aGreekment’ the Greek government must agree proposals with the ECB, Commission and the IMF BEFORE they are submitted to Parliament.  This structure effectively renders the democratic process irrelevant as the deal will be done before it ever reaches Parliament. This is probably just as well as it merely brings the ‘aGreekment’ into line with most other European legislation.

The implications?  First, the short-term.  If one strips away all the ridiculous talk of coups and German takeovers the bottom-line is that the Greeks by voting ‘no’ to austerity but ‘yes’ to Eurozone membership were effectively (almost childishly) inviting me the Dutch taxpayer to go on indefinitely paying for a clientelistic political and economic system that was not fit for the twenty-first century world.  Such a system would have collapsed sooner or later under the weight of its own corrupt inertia and had to be reformed.

In the longer-term the implications are profound and not just for Greece.  The Eurozone is at a crossroads because the current crisis reveals yet again the sheer lunacy of creating a political project that is not grounded in sound fiscal and monetary policy.  This crisis was forged back in 1991 and the establishment of the Maastricht Convergence Criteria and the rules governing the single currency.  In the absence of true political and fiscal union and enforcing institutions it was hoped that the member-states would adhere to the rules.  They did not – including France and Germany. 

However, with EU-scepticism growing there is little or no appetite for a European super-state or anything like it, not least because such an entity would kill off democracy once and for all in Europe.  Nor is there agreement between Eurozone members about future direction. It is clear from the wording of the ‘aGreekment’ that German conservatives drove the process far more than French socialists. This means the entire debate over ‘governance’ will stumble on for another decade or so, as will the euro itself.  Growth will be stymied, jobs will go uncreated, and savings will be raided.  Worse, the Eurozone will go on obsessing with itself as Europe’s relative decline accelerates precisely because of the Euro’s dangerous structural flaws and contradictions. This will render not just Europe but the wider world a very much more dangerous place.

EU founding father Jean Monnet said, “Europe will be forged in crises, and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for each crisis”.  In fact with each crisis the European project has become more elitist, ever more rigid and progressively weaker as the high priests and priestesses of Euroland crash hard against the battered redoubts of national politics.   And, for all of Greece’s child-like behaviour the Greeks have at least swept away the hubris covering an important and dangerous principle of ‘ever closer union’. When the technical requirements of European economic cohesion clash with politics and democracy it is and always will be the latter that loses.  That is why ‘Europe’ is an elite project and more Europe will mean ever more elite fiat and less democracy.

Julian Lindley-French

Britain Restores (some) Strategic Balance

Alphen, Netherlands. 9 July. Britain is to spend more on defence. However, upon what Britain spends more on. for what reason and to what effect must now be at the core of the coming Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015 (SDSR 2015) due to be unveiled in October.

Chief of the British Defence Staff General Sir Nick Houghton called yesterday “a great day for defence”. He also said that the defence chiefs would no longer need to focus on “managed decline”.  And, on the face of it I must swallow some humble pie this morning. Or, rather, I can feel vaguely vindicated that my long campaign with many others has succeeded (including the writing of a 2015 book – Little Britain: Twenty-First Century Strategy for a Middling European Power) to get the British Government to restore some strategic balance and respond to the real world as it is not as they would like it to be.  

In yesterday’s budget statement Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne committed to maintaining Britain’s defence budget at the NATO guideline of 2% GDP until 2020 and to the creation of a Joint Security Fund of £1.5bn per annum.  Now, one has to be careful about just what will be included in this beefed-up ‘defence’ budget. However, if real then not only has a thin red line been drawn under the massive defence cuts of the last five years but an investment base is being established that will confirm Britain as Europe’s strongest military power, and a modest but influential world power.  Critically, SDSR 2015 now has sufficient investment behind its thinking and planning to establish a new, radical, joint British force able to reach out to allies and across to civilian partners both within government and beyond.

Let me give you an idea of scale. Whilst the British defence budget pales into significance alongside this year's US defence budget of some $534.3bn (£353bn or €492bn) London still spends a lot of money on defence and is about to spend more.  Indeed, with an economy worth some $3015 trillion (£1958 trillion or €2717 trillion) in 2015 spending 2% GDP amounts to some $60.3bn (£39.16bn or €54.3bn). Poland, for example, will spend this year spend some 38.4bn Zloty or $10bn on defence. 

However, there is still some devil in the detail of the Chancellor’s announcement.  This year Britain will spend (rather than budget for) some $61.8bn on defence (£40.13bn or €55.69bn). In other words, going from 2.15% of GDP on defence to 2% still represents a further real terms cut of $1.5bn or £0.98bn.  There is clearly some budgetary sleight of hand at work in these figures. However, the simple truth is that if the 2% target is to be met over the 2016-2020 period Britain will indeed need to spend an additional $6-8bn of defence.   

The critical point is this; with a committed defence equipment budget of £163bn ($250.75bn or €226.46bn) over the 2011-2021 period and with the commitment to a real terms increase of 0.5% per annum until 2020 in the defence budget the new British Government has clearly moved to stabilise a force that was beginning to show signs of serious decline and service chiefs can far better balance new equipment and the demands on personnel they will make.  Indeed, whilst these investments do not match the current levels of investment being pumped into their respective armed forces by, say. China and Russia (frankly nor should they) if one removes France from the equation the UK defence equipment budget is bigger than the rest of Europe combined.  Given the centrality of alliances and coalitions to British defence strategy that growing disparity will itself mean growing interoperability problems with under-equipped European allies in the years to come.  So, yesterday’s announcement demonstrates a British Prime Minister who has made a very public decision to remain close to the United States at whatever cost.  Are you listening Washington?

So, what else does yesterday’s announcement reveal about the state and future of the British armed forces?

1.  SDSR 2010 made defence cuts that went too fast and too far as the government panicked in the aftermath of the banking crisis and tried to re-balance the national books unrealistically quickly.  Indeed, yesterday’s entire budget statement was an implicit admission of that;

2. SDSR 2015 now has enough guaranteed investment for planners to think strategically rather than strictly financially and thus will be far better able to match defence ends, ways and means in the coming years. To that end, the National Security Strategy and SDSR 2015 must clearly be part of a strategic planning continuum centred upon the National Security Council which must act in turn as the security and defence planning driver across government; and

3. The Joint Security Fund reinforces an idea central to my book Little Britain that the British establish a ‘joint’ vision across the two axes of national security and defence and the tri-service.  Recent initiatives such as the Joint Force Command (JFC), Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) and the Combined Joint Expeditionary Force (CJEF) with the French, must be built upon to generate sufficient mass to deter, sufficient 'manoeuvre' to move quickly, and sufficient agility to work with all possible partners across the conflict spectrum. In short, defence must be properly plugged into security.

There are also some real challenges that must be addressed by the Armed Forces themselves:

 1.   Why do the French (for example) with a comparative but marginally smaller defence and defence-equipment budget always seem to get more force for each euro of investment? For too long Britain has been ‘rubbish’ at defence procurement and for too long prime defence contractors have run rings around the British defence Establishment. This has helped to significantly boost defence cost inflation and resulted too often in inferior kit being procured at inflated prices very slowly and in insufficient numbers.  Yesterday the share value of BAE Systems jumped significantly on the announcement of a defence budget hike.  If that means investors think BAE (and Thales) can again gorge their extended guts on the defence teet then they must be sorely disappointed;

2.  SDSR 2015 must be the enablers review, i.e. the focus must be on those things that bind the forces into one force by providing eyes, ears and brains.  One of the tragedies of SDSR 2010 was that it forced the three service chiefs to defend their respective core forces.  The Army tried (and failed) to defend its regiments, the Royal Air Force defended fast jets (well most of them), and the Royal Navy focused on getting the new carriers completed, together with the other new platforms desperately needed after over a decade of land-centric operations.  Vital enablers such as vital maritime patrol aircraft were cut because there was no service chief to defend them during a Treasury rather than strategy-led assault on the Armed Forces.

In Little Britain I call for a new understanding by London of its role and that of its armed forces in the new nexus of twenty-first century nastiness. A role that must confront dangerous change in the world and reflect the power and responsibilities of one of the world’s top five economic and military powers, that places the forces at the heart of Britain’s security and defence, and strikes a new balance between the size, scope, missions and tasks of Britain’s world renowned armed forces.  Yesterday, Prime Minister Cameron together with his colleagues George Osborne and Defence Secretary Michael Fallon stepped up to the plate and for that I offer my sincere congratulations.  Britain is beginning to restore strategic balance and that will in turn strengthen the tattered transatlantic relationship, NATO and European defence.  I could niggle about this or that but I will not because yesterday, I saw something I have been begging for – British strategic leadership. Thank you, Prime Minister, for your “big push”!

However, I will finish with two challenges.  My first challenge is to the service chiefs. I have the honour of knowing General Houghton and First Sea Lord Admiral Sir George Zambellas, and I respect Chief of the Air Staff Sir Andrew Pulford, and Chief of the General Staff Sir Nick Carter.  These are serious people doing a very serious job at a very serious time.  However, let me be blunt gentlemen. The Chancellor has afforded you a chance to present your joint vision of the future British force and to deliver it.  You must therefore speak with one voice to the Prime Minister, the Chancellor, Secretary Fallon and the ‘Chief’. That means no more implicit warfare between the Navy, the Army and the Air Force over budgets. As a taxpayer I find such inter-Service rivalry/tribalism not only ridiculous but boring and dangerous. Sadly, I am still hearing echoes of tribalism in the corridors of power and in the various service strategies being worked up.  It must stop. For the country’s sake don’t blow it!

My second challenge is to the Secretary of State for Defence, Michael Fallon.  The Whitehall culture is first to protect the minister and only then to protect the country.  As SDSR 2015 is being worked up over the next (and famous) “100 days” it will succeed only if it is a truly strategic document that balances strategy, capability, capacity and affordability.  If that balance is to be struck assumptions will need to be challenged.  That in turn means the planting of a real Red Team at the core of the process, a real awkward squad, people who will and can challenge both process and assumptions and who are far more than legitimisers of perceived ministerial and department wisdom.  That in turn will require political courage, Mr Fallon, which I believe you possess in spades.

Julian Lindley-French 

US Military Strategy 2015: Over-Stretched, Under-Stated & Over There

“Our frontiers are the coasts of the enemy and we should be there five minutes after war is declared.”

Admiral Lord Fisher, First Sea Lord, 1902

Alphen, Netherlands. 8 July. What is interesting about the new US military strategy is what it implies not what it says. Over the past week I have torn apart, “The National Military Strategy of the United States of America 2015”.  The more I read it the more my historian’s mind cast me back to the early years of the twentieth century, the Anglo-German naval race and the end of the Two Power Standard which established the mighty Royal Navy at at least twice the size and power of the next two most powerful navies combined. 

My assessment of the Strategy is thus; an America on the cusp of precipitate relative military decline and a world on the brink of a new and very dangerous geopolitical competition.  It is relative decline exacerbated critically by Europe’s retreat from strategic engagement, most notably Britain.  Europe’s retreat is contributing to the rapid rise of the illiberal challenge to America’s liberal ‘empire’ of the seas.  

America’s splendid military isolation when allies were nice to have but at best a luxury, at worst a hindrance has now been brought decisively to an end.  America will need really capable allies with powerful capable militaries if America’s leadership of the liberal preponderance is to persist.  But where are those allies?  Tiny Australia (current military flavour of the month in Washington)? Forget it.

This brings me to the essential problem of the Strategy; it only hints at the strategic reality it is in fact describing and forecasting.  At times Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Martin E. Dempsey sounds as if he is going through the motions with more of an eye on telling the White House and the Hill what they want to hear than properly confronting America’s growing military dilemma.  For example, “Today’s global security environment is the most unpredictable I have seen in 40 years of service….global disorder has significantly increased whilst some of our comparative advantages have begun to erode”.  In fact, a look at relative military investment statistics the world over and it is apparent American military preponderance is eroding fast and has been for some time.

The Strategy focuses on three dynamics of strategic erosion: the rise of “counter-revisionist states”; the emergence of “violent extremist organizations”; and the prospect of decisive technology and/or counter-technology shift in military affairs. 

The Strategy cites revisionist Russia, competitive China, irritating but dangerous Iran, mad North Korea, and of course the insanity of ‘ISIL’, as the five main sources of challenge to the US military.  However, in terms of the required response the Strategy at times sounds hollow echoing Admiral Lord Fisher’s hubristic attempt to reassure early twentieth century Britian and to justify the enormous cost of the Royal Navy: “The supremacy of the British Navy is the best guarantee for peace in the world”.  Contrast Fisher’s dictum with the Strategy. “The United States is the world’s strongest nation, enjoying unique advantages in technology, energy, alliances and partners, and demographics.  However, these advantages are being challenged”.  And?

The central dilemma the Strategy (sort of) addresses concerns the balance to be struck between US capabilities, capacity, military readiness and what the British called back in pre-WW1 days “the burden of armaments”.  It is a balance that Britain is about to finally abandon in its forthcoming Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015 (strategic pretence and impecunity review) and which Continental Europe gave up long ago, much to America’s strategic loss.  However, the Strategy offers no real vision as to the future balance the US military will need to strike.

Critically, the Strategy in no way links that balance to any real assessment of what the stated strategic challenges will mean for the geographical range and functional scope of an American military task-list that could expand exponentially over the coming years. This is especially so as the US military finds itself having to prepare for major wars and strategic insurgencies the world over and at one and the same time.

Being an optimistic nation the Americans place great store on the transformative properties of technology as the spear-tip of comparative strategic advantage and its maintenance.  However, technology breakthrough works both ways.  In 1906 the British built the superb HMS Dreadnought in one hundred days.  The first all big-gun battleship equipped with revolutionary Parsons turbines she combined firepower, speed and armoured protection.  At a stroke she rendered every other battleship in the world obsolete, most notably those of the German peer competitor. However, even more notably the massive (and it was truly massive) bulk of the Royal Navy’s battle fleets were also rendered obsolete.

Like Britain in 1906 America is relying on its military-technological defence industrial base to ensure the US military continues to lead the world.  However, when I read the May 2015 Chinese Military Strategy alongside the US military strategy I could not but recall a quote by Admiral von Tirpitz, the architect of Germany’s naval challenge to Britain, “All policy hostile to England must wait until we have a fleet as strong as the English”.  Germany never achieved that and went to war in 1914 with only 24 dreadnoughts and super-dreadnoughts against Britain’s 49…and lost.

Here’s the rub of this ‘Strategy’; it only hints at the worst case scenario for which the US military must prepare which goes something like this.  Some year’s hence America faces simultaneous (planned or opportunistic) challenges in Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Europe from the likes of China, Iran, Russia (with ISIL still in the mix).  Strong enough to prevail in any one, possibly any two of the three, but not all three Washington finds itself in the worst of all the worlds the Strategy predicts.

Instead, as I read the Strategy I could not also help but recall my Oxford thesis on British policy and the coming of war 1933-1941.  One of the major debates the British had in the 1930s concerned a war in which Britain simultaneously faced Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and the militarists in Japan.  The Chiefs of the Imperial General Staff were clear; Britain could just about fight Germany and Italy in an around Europe, but only with the Indian Army could Britain possibly hope to fight Japan at the same time.  In effect, the ‘Chiefs’ said that to prevail in Europe, Britain had to effectively abandon the Pacific Empire.  The rest, as they say, is history!

The bottom but under-stated line of this Strategy is that for it to work America needs capable military allies on both its Asia-Pacific and European strategic flanks allied to an organisation that promotes strategic military coherence and interoperability that would look not unlike NATO. 

Ouch!

Julian Lindley-French 

Time to Rethink Europe

Vienna, Austria. 6 July.  European leaders must confront change or it will engulf them. Two hundred years ago this month Austria-Hungary’s Foreign Minister Prince von Metternich said; “Any plan conceived in moderation must fail when the circumstances are set in extremes”.  Metternich was the dominant figure at the 1815 Congress of Vienna, which took place in the Hofburg Palace here in Vienna, and which had been called to rethink ‘Europe’ in the wake of Napoleon Bonaparte’s failed attempt to impose a form of European elite universalism. It is time again to rethink ‘Europe’.

Now, I fully accept that my citing of the Congress of Vienna as an analogy has more to do with history than politics.  The Congress after all was a triumph of ultra-conservatism and involved Russia, which would not be a good idea today.  However, the Congress was needed precisely because of the structural social and political pressures that had led to the spawning of Bonapartism, the corrupt universalism Napoleon espoused.  Indeed, Bonapartism emerged from the 1789 French Revolution with a universalist message that resonated far beyond the borders of France, rocked Europe’s many ancien regimes, and arguably in time (long time) emerged triumphant.

Contrast that with today.  The Greek crisis (and a possible Grexit) is but one example of the many structural pressures that are beginning to tear the European Union apart.  Many Greeks see themselves in the vanguard of a deepening battle between ordinary Europeans and Europe’s elite, many of whom are neither elected nor legitimate – the ECB’s Mario Draghi for one.  Whilst these same Greeks tend to ignore the fact that Greece signed up to the rules of the Eurozone the Greek crisis has finally torn open the fault-line at the heart of the EU between democracy and technocracy, and between national and parliamentary sovereignty and European supranationalism.  Indeed, I recall my exchange last year with Italy’s former ‘technocrat’ prime minister Mario Monti when he suggested to me that there were other forms of government than democracy.

It is that sense of ‘illegitimate Europe’ which is also implicit in the Brexit debate, the sense of a distant elite ideology being imposed on the individual in the name of ever closer elite integration, and which is doing so much damage to the idea of ‘Europe’ in which I still believe.  It is also political pressure that will continue to grow if the balance between democracy and decision-making is not restored and quickly.  Such an elite sea change seems unlikely as all concern expressed is dismissed routinely as 'populism'. Indeed, a decade ago Europe’s elite simply ignored popular concerns expressed in France, the Netherlands, Ireland and Denmark at the time of the Constitutional Treaty.  Instead of listening the euro-elite simply changed the label and rammed through a new EU ‘constitution’ in the form of the 2007 Lisbon Treaty. 

The concerns of the people were right.  Europe’s nation-states have become emaciated but no other form of legitimate ‘governance’ has emerged to replace it.  Lisbon was a treaty too far for it critically undermined national parliamentary sovereignty without replacing it with any form of legitimate governance in its place. The consequence is that for the past decade ‘Europe’ has been gridlocked by its internal political contradiction; half super-Alliance, half supranational federation.  

The Euro is the most obvious emblem of Europe’s political deadlock.  For a single currency to work there must be a single treasury and thus a single government.  In the absence of such a ‘government’ too many nation-states have been reduced to the political equivalent of children let loose in a candy store and behaved like it, Greece to the fore. However, it is not just the single currency that has suffered as a consequence of an ill-conceived elite political project. Europe’s political deadlock has also accelerated European strategic decline that has in turn destabilised wider Europe and encouraged the rise of opportunists such as President Putin.

If Europe’s leaders are honest with themselves the real message of the Greek crisis is that the ideology of elite Europeanism has been rejected and with it the idea of distant technocratic power. If Europe’s leaders are honest with themselves they will admit it is time to return to a new balance of intergovernmental powers in Europe; the EU as super-alliance rather than proto-federation.  If Europe’s leaders are honest with themselves they will admit that if the growing structural pressures are to be addressed a new treaty is needed that sees power returned to member-states from Brussels so that the child-like irresponsibility so apparent in the Greek crisis is ended.  Sadly, the truth is that Europe’s opaque, self-interested elite are incapable of being honest with themselves or their peoples.  And so the European Project will stumble on until it collapses in the face of history as plans even if conceived in moderation collapse in the very self-willed extremis a refusal to face political reality will inevitably generate.  All Europeans will lose as a result. The danger as ever in Europe is the danger of extremes. The danger that Europe will lurch again from extreme universalism to extreme nationalism.  

The Hofburg Palace still defines Vienna, the beautiful signature city of a once great empire that died in 1919 because it no longer reflected the political reality that it had tried so long to resist.  Bonaparte’s final defeat at Waterloo on 18 June, 1815 saw not the emergence of a pluralistic, legitimate Europe but a new balance of power between autocracies and partially legitimised aristocracies that itself collapsed into horror in 1914. 

Today as in the past seismic shifts in European politics happen because elites for too long refuse to adapt to change.  As Metternich said, “It is useless to close the gates against ideas; they overlap them”.  The simple truth is that for most Europeans their nation-states still define their identities and their democracies and Europe's elite can no longer simply ride roughshod over either.

Vienna is a warning from history to Europe’s elite Europeanists that they ignore at their and indeed our peril.

Julian Lindley-French

Strategic Islamism must be defeated in the Field

Alphen, Netherlands. 30 June. In responding to the terrible events in Tunisia in which thirty or more Britons were gunned down on Friday Prime Minister David Cameron talked of an existential struggle, a generational struggle.  And yet he seems to completely under-estimate the scale of the challenge posed by Islamic State, the Caliphate which was established a year ago this week and the strategic Islamism they champion.  He also refused to state the blindingly obvious; Islamic State will need to be defeated in the field BEFORE it can be defeated on our streets. That means armed forces that must have the capability and the capacity to go back and fight in the Middle East.   

So, why does strategic Islamism, and in particular IS, pose an existential threat (note the use of Islamism not Islamic, which is a vital distinction)?  First, strategic Islamism threatens to destroy the state system across the Middle East with enormous political and humanitarian implications.  Second, strategic Islamism reaches deep into now complex European societies. Third, there is no doubt that IS would seek to gain and use mass destructive and disruptive weapons and technologies against open societies. Fourth, there is no conceivable political accommodation with IS.

Prime Minister Cameron as ever says all the right things, but as ever does very little to back his words with action.  For example, my well-placed sources tell me that Cameron is sympathetic to the need to rebuild the British armed forces.  However, Chancellor (finance minister) George Osborne has made further cuts to the British armed forces in the forthcoming Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) a leitmotif for his fixation with achieving an arbitrary budget surplus by 2018-2019.

Osborne apparently told Cameron that if he agrees to the NATO target of maintaining Britain’s defence budget at 2% GDP then he can “say goodbye to the budget surplus”. Osborne has even threatened to resign if the coming Review does not confirm further swingeing cuts to Britain’s forces.  Worse, those around Osborne in the Treasury by and large adhere to the end of history nonsense believing there to be no real need to the world’s fifth largest economy and Permanent Member of the UN Security Council to have powerful armed forces.

Rather, they believe that a mix of strong intelligence services, an intrusive state and extended policing can contain the Islamist threat within Britain, allied to the constant downplaying of the threat posed by strategic Islamism.  For example, a very well-informed contact of mine tells me that far from there being 700 British ‘fighters’ in Syria and Iraq there are some 2000 and that some 1000 have recently returned to Britain. This is strategic illiteracy at its dangerous worst, especially when one considers such retreat against the backdrop of a rapidly rearming, aggressive Russia.

Consequently, the armed forces are forced to perform political fig-leaf operations.  Cameron likes to say that Britain is the second most active member of the anti-IS coalition.  In fact, the US carries out some 94% of all operations.  Given the caution of the Obama administration and the extremely lukewarm commitment of America’s allies (both within and without the region) the entire strategy upon which the coalition is founded has become fundamentally flawed with no real link between the strategic objective of defeating IS and the forces and resources committed.  Local fighters are incapable of defeating IS in the field which now has at its command resources that increasingly give it the appearance of a state.   

The result is that IS continues to cultivate the myth of military invincibility which makes it so attractive to the aggrieved, the marginalised and the fanatical across both the region, Europe and the wider world.  Therefore, until IS is defeated in the field and if needs be by a ground force with Western troops to the fore then the allure of IS well beyond Syria and Iraq will only grow.

Critically, Cameron has to ask himself a profound question and for once honestly answer it; which is the most important struggle – reducing national debt or fighting strategic Islamism.  If he is to honestly answer that question Cameron will also for once have to take a strategic position rather than a political position and with other European leaders stop running scared from the memory of Afghanistan and Iraq. That means recommitting Britain to fight the very existential struggle he proclaims with an existential mind-set whatever the near-term political costs.  It is as though Winston Churchill had said in 1940 that Britain was determined to fight Nazism, but only if it did not exacerbate the national debt. 

First, Cameron must commit more of Britain’s forces to the struggle and end the ridiculous constraint by which IS can only be attacked in Iraq not Syria.  Second, he must stop playing political games with Britain’s defences, particularly the capacity of Britain’s armed forces to undertake sustained operations.  Given the current threats ‘maintaining’ the NATO target of 2% GDP on defence simply by cooking the books is a dereliction of duty.  Folding the aid budget, intelligence and the nuclear deterrent into the defence budget simply to give the appearance of 2% in fact represents a massive cut to the operational forces and their ability to act.

Finally, if an increasingly obsessive George Osborne refuses to realise the world has moved on since 2010 and that his fixation with his arbitrary budget surplus is in fact yesterday’s struggle then he must be removed from office.  If not Britain and indeed the wider coalition will go on fighting strategic Islamism with one hand tied behind its back and the only winner will be IS. 

Prime Minister Cameron made a solemn promise to avenge Friday’s victims by dealing with the threat at source.  To do so he must help defeat IS in the field.  Anything less and yet again words will be seen as hollow as the promises he made yesterday to the victims.

Julian Lindley-French 

NATO: THE ENDURING ALLIANCE 2015

NEW LINDLEY-FRENCH BOOK; NATO: THE ENDURING ALLIANCE 2015

Dear Friend and Colleague,

it is with pleasure I announce the publication by Routledge of my latest book NATO: The Enduring Alliance 2015.  The book is a complete re-write and update of my successful 2007 edition.  The focus of the book is NATO's place in the twenty-first century world and consideration of the impact of the Afghanistan campaign on the Alliance.  However, the backbone of the book is a fast-paced telling of NATO's story since its founding in 1949 against the backdrop of contemporary change.  

The book consdiers in depth the impact of the financial crisis on the Alliance and explores the evolving relationship between NATO and the EU.  Critically, the book confronts squarely the strategic implications of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.  The book also looks to the strategic future of NATO in a dangerous world faced not just by Moscow's challenge but American over-stretch and the murderous Islamists of ISIS.  The book concludes by confirming the continuing importance of the Alliance not just to European security and defence but the security and well-being of the wider world. 

To be honest, I am proud of this book as I put a lot into re-writing and updating it.  Indeed, with a Foreword by former SACEUR Admiral (Retd.) James T. Stavridis NATO: The Enduring Alliance 2015 is a new book on the Alliance which I have the honour to offer to you. The book is available via Amazon and/or Routledge web-sites.

All best, 

Julian

EU Summit Sitrep: Crisis Mismanagement

Alphen, Netherlands. 26 June. Yesterday’s EU Summit meetings (Day One) finished today at 0300 hours.  The three main issues for debate were Grexit, Brexit and the migration invasion.  In other words, one state that could be thrown out, another that might walk out, and the up to one million people from outside the EU trying, and by and large succeeding, to get in.  Let me take each crisis in order of importance to EU leaders (save that is David Cameron).

Grexit: Implicit in the Grexit crisis is a battle for primacy between EU obligations and national democracy. The theatre of crisis that has developed over a possible Grexit would make a fascinating thesis for Greece’s game theoretician finance minister Yanis Varoufakis.  The simple truth is that one way or another Greece will remain in the Euro and one way or another Greece’s debts will be forgiven. This is because the Euro is an ideology not a currency and thus at the very heart of ‘Project Europe’ and Greece simply cannot be squeezed anymore.  Thus, the game now is one of political chicken.  Specifically, can ‘Brussels’ force the fall of the current Greek government over the crisis and thus install a more amenable coalition or if needs be a new Athens government.  

Migration invasion: Implicit in the migration invasion is a core debate about ‘competence’ and who gets to decide a key area of Home Affairs - immigration policy. Is it the member-states or the European Commission? The inability of Europe to tackle the current migration invasion and the unwillingness of any EU member-state to properly comply with the Dublin Convention demonstrates how easily EU ‘solidarity’ collapses in the face of a crisis.  The Commission had wanted to impose a binding directive that would have instructed all member-states that do not ‘enjoy’ an opt-out to take quotas of migrants.  The idea was that up to 60,000 migrants would be spread proportionately across the Union.  Instead, last night the member-states agreed a ‘voluntary’ mechanism, which in EU-speak means no-one need or will comply. 

Consequently, Italy and Greece will go on refusing to document new arrivals on their territory, the convention by which asylum must be claimed by a migrant in the first EU member-state of arrival will be ignored, and the beggar my neighbour tactic of passing the problem onto the next member-state will continue. Why?  With 500,000 migrants believed to be in Libya and another 500,000 on the way a migration invasion on this scale would have enormous social implications and the very real prospect that parts of Europe could be turned into Africa or the Middle East.  As for dealing with problem at source there is neither the will nor the means.

Brexit: Implicit in Brexit is a vital debate over the future balance of powers within the EU between a deeper and more politically integrated Eurozone (the real EU) and those EU member-states outside the Eurozone (associate members).  However, British Prime Minister David Cameron (ever the tactician, never the strategist) chose instead to focus his efforts over dinner on how best to extricate himself from the promise of an EU referendum he made to the British people prior the May general election.  Indeed, listening to allies such as Italy’s Matteo Renzi this morning one gets the distinct impression of friends trying to extricate Cameron from a hole of his own digging.  One can only imagine Cameron’s pitch last night over dinner.  “Look friends, I have to go through this process because I said I would so please bear with me and pretend you are taking my calls for reform seriously. Sorry”.

The simple and sad truth is that any reforms worth having to Britain’s relationship with the the EU will require treaty change.  Last night Downing Street admitted that Cameron is not going to get treaty change and certainly not before the end of 2017 by which time the referendum will have taken place.  So Cameron is now in the ridiculous position of holding an in-out referendum with nothing decided or achieved and on at best a promise of reform.  In practice that means any vote to remain in the EU will negate the need for the very reforms Cameron claims he is fighting for.  Or, the British people vote to leave and the other EU leaders are finally forced to offer Cameron a reform package by which time it will be too late.  As a negotiating strategy it reminds me of the time I was sent off in a football match for head-butting an opponent’s fist! Cameron’s referendum will thus offer no change of substance, decide even less and fail completely to resolve Britain’s troubled relationship with the EU. Therefore, why he is putting himself, Britain and the EU through what will be a very difficult process with no obvious strategic or political gain?

Julian Lindley-French

Germany: Community Champion?

Alphen, Netherlands. 25 June.  Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and I have had a lot in common this week; we both spent a lot of time either in Germany or discussing Germany.  The Queen is in the midst of a state visit to Germany and I have just completed a 1200 plus kilometre round car trip to take part in the Kiel Conference part organised by the German Navy and the University of Kiel.  The previous week I was in Warsaw with the Weimar Forum.  Both events were outstanding in their very different ways and both revealed to me how Germany sees power and indeed its own power role in twenty-first century Europe.  Too powerful to be simply another EU member-state and yet not powerful enough to dominate Germany is casting itself as Europe’s community champion.  It is and will be a difficult role to play.

A couple of weeks ago a senior British officer said to me that Germany had in fact won World War Two and that Britain had lost.  On the face of it one can understand his upbeat view of Germany and his downcast view of Britain.  Germany has indeed succeeded in achieving Kaiser Wilhelm’s dream of a Europe organised around Germany.  Indeed, it was rather bizarre (and indeed a great pleasure) for me to be sailing across the great sound of Kiel in a German naval vessel with HMS Ocean, a huge British helicopter carrier, dominating the skyline (and the generators of which kept me awake – note to Royal Navy).  Kiel was once the base for the High Seas Fleet which tried and failed to defeat the Royal Navy during the First World War. It is also the port from which the massive super-battleship KM Bismarck left in 1941 en route to destroying HMS Hood and her own destruction under the guns of the Royal Navy some three days later.

In response to my British colleague I said World War Two was never fought to destroy Germany but rather to ensure that the nature of Germany was rendered forever constructive and peaceful.  Britain played a massive role in achieving that objective and Britain can be proud that today Germany is a model parliamentary democracy.

Yes, Germany can be bombastic.  Tell me what great power isn’t.  Apart of course from Britain which is and never has been bombastic about anything, ever.  Yes, Germany has interests which it on occasions pursues with real rigour.  Yes, quite a few Germans have a nauseating tendency to believe they are right about everything all of the time.  And, not a few Germans seem to enjoy an exaggerated sense of Schadenfraude at Britain’s seemingly endless un-Germaness firm in their belief that because Britain is not Germany the British are doomed to failure, irrelevance, misery etc. etc.  Taken together these ‘endearing’ German traits can lead Berlin on occasions to step over the boundary between community champion and Imperium.

However, my time with German leaders this past year and indeed this past week have reinforced my sense that modern Germany is a power that is deeply embedded indeed enmeshed is a sense of European community.  Contemporary German history, which blots out the rest of German history like a dark cloud blots out the sun, is powerfully eloquent in the minds of most modern Germans, with the holocaust rightly to the fore.

Consequently, German power is ring-fenced with self-restraint and the desperate need to act with the approval of other Europeans.  That sense of self-awareness, self-restraint was clearly apparent at the Weimar Forum meeting in Warsaw, particularly in the relationship with Poland which in many ways acts a Germany’s power conscience.  It is also apparent in Chancellor Merkel’s clear desire to keep Greece in the Eurozone and Britain in the EU.  Indeed, unlike most great powers Germany wants to be constrained by institutions, precisely because Germans understand that a Europe in which power becomes unbalanced is inevitably a very dangerous place.  This is a state of affairs to which Her Majesty alluded in last night’s speech in Berlin and why the unbalancing of European power is precisely why President Putin’s attitude and actions are so dangerous.

Behind the immediate issues raised by Prime Minister David Cameron’s renegotiation of Britain’s relationship with the German-led EU lurks a much deeper question of power.  Whatever happens with the Brexit referendum most indicators have Britain emerging as Europe’s second strongest economy by a mile (or should that be a kilometre) and most powerful military actor.  Therefore, how Germany deals with the likes of Britain and indeed France will help determine whether German leadership of Europe succeeds or fails.

Berlin clearly understands that.  Indeed, the very real pomp and circumstance afforded Her Majesty in Berlin and the fact the Luftwaffe accompanied her plane over German air space signifies the importance Germany places in its strategic partnership with Britain.  For that reason far from fearing Germany’s role as community champion Britain must support it.

Europeans can never replace power by and with institutions.  Russia is dangerous because it is a weak state with too much force and it insufficiently embedded in international institutions.  Germany is a powerful state with too little force that has an exaggerated sense of the role of institutions as an alternative to power. Therefore, Germany can only and will only ever succeed in partnership with powerful allies for too much German armed force would negate Germany’s role as community champion.  That is why the ungainly but powerful presence of HMS Ocean signified to me the new strategic partnership Britain and Germany must forge. 

Julian Lindley-French

How Waterloo Shaped Europe

Alphen, Netherlands. 18 June. The Duke of Wellington once said, “The history of a battle is not unlike the history of a ball. Some individuals may recollect all the little events of which the great result is the battle won or lost, but no individual can recollect the order in which, or the exact moment at which, they occurred, which makes all the difference as to their value or importance”. Two hundred years ago today just down the road from here the Battle of Waterloo took place.  Seventy-three thousand French troops under Napoleon faced some 68,000 troops of the “Seventh Coalition” under the command of Arthur, Duke of Wellington. 

Coalition forces included 25,000 British troops, 17,000 Dutch, 11,000 Hanoverians, 6000 Brunswickians, 6000 members of the King’s German Legion and eventually (and famously) 50,000 Prussians under Blucher. By day’s end over 40,000 Frenchmen were killed or missing with some 10,000 of the Coalition suffering a similar fate.

Waterloo was not any old European battle. It was the battle that shaped modern Europe and began the long and very tortuous road to an institutionalised Europe.  A new age of politics and warfare dawned at Waterloo as the battle marked the true end of the aristocratic age as the modern industrial nation-state came of power age. 

And, although the Iron Duke would contest my thesis European democracy also marched at Waterloo. The Napoleonic Wars which Waterloo brought to a decisive end marked the first real struggle between vested power and radicalism and thus helped established the European world order that is only today coming to an end.  The battle also paved for way for the creation of modern Germany some fifty years later and the three wars of European supremacy (1870-71, 1914-18, 1939-1945) which followed and which culminated in today’s European Union. 

Critically, Waterloo created the political space for the second British Empire which emerged in the wake of Napoleon’s defeat the loss of the American colonies.  Indeed, without rival on the Continent and unchallenged on the world stage for another seventy to eighty years the British constructed the largest empire the world has ever seen in the wake of Waterloo..and one of shortest lived.

Not without irony, for Waterloo was a victory of conservatism over radicalism, the Congress of Vienna which followed established the principle of an institutionalised European order, even though the Congress was dominated by the arch-conservatives Metternich of Austria and Castlereagh of Britain.  And, although Britain claimed to then retreat into “splendid isolation” Waterloo confirmed the principle of British engagement on the Continent. Moreover, the battle reinforced the fundamental principle that Britain would not permit a single power or group of powers to dominate Europe.  It is a principle that the Cameron government is in the process of abandoning or simply fails to understand.

Waterloo also exacerbated conflicts, not least the inherent conflict that existed between France and the Netherlands and between French and Dutch speakers.  At the Congress of Vienna almost the entire region of what eventually became Belgium was granted to the Kingdom of the Netherlands.  Subsequently, a new struggle for independence began that only culminated with the recognition of the Kingdom of Belgium in 1830 by the Dutch.  Belgium’s recognition was reinforced by the 1839 Treaty of London and the Belgian Neutrality Act by which Britain agreed to guarantee Belgium.  It was this Act, or rather the Kaiser’s 1914 breach of it that led to the formal declaration of war by Britain against Imperial Germany.

Some years ago I stood atop the enormous man-made hill which is crowned by the great Lion of Brabant which looks out over the great battlefield.  Alongside me were some twenty of so American students.  Those of you who know the site will recall that the modern Brussels ring-road runs close by.  Indeed, it was Napoleon’s belief that if he took Brussels he could force the Alliance to treat with him on favourable terms. Nice kids but a little naïve I explained to them that Napoleon faced two major problems on the day.  First, he could not get Wellington to weaken his centre and thus turn him. The Duke simply remained nailed to a ridge.  Second, I explained, Napoleon had terrible difficulties getting his army across the narrow footbridge which now crosses the highway. It took some minutes before the American penny dropped on a very European joke.

Waterloo was one of those tipping points in European history.  Indeed, far from being a British ‘victory’, which is how the British at least normally portray ‘Waterloo’, it was a very European event. In certain very important respects the struggle between Bonapartism and British-led conservatism spawned the birth of modern Europe.  Ironically, the ghosts of that struggle are present today in both the idea of ‘Europe’ which Napoleon certainly espoused and British concerns at the over-concentration of European elite power in a few elite hands.

Nor was the result of the battle a forgone conclusion.  As Wellington himself remarked the battle was, “the nearest run thing you did ever see in your life”.  As for Napoleon he escaped the battlefield following his defeat and tried to escape to North America.  Ironically, in a sign of the century to come, Napoleon was eventually captured by Captain Frederick Maitland of HMS Bellerophon.  Far from surrendering to Wellington’s Army the Emperor surrendered to what was still very much Nelson’s Royal Navy.

Julian Lindley-French