In Honour of the Falklands Victory

Pangbourne College, England. 7 April. “Be pleased to inform Her Majesty that the Union Jack once again flies over Stanley. God save the Queen". Those famous words of Brigadier-General Moore resonated last night as I was accorded the singular honour of giving the keynote address at the Thirtieth Anniversary Falklands Command dinner before Britain’s Chief of Defence Staff and the officers and men who had led Britain to victory in 1982. This blog remembers Britain’s stunning victory in the South Atlantic and the defence of freedom through the use of legitimate military power that was its driving force.

My specific purpose was to pay tribute not just to the living but to the 252 British servicemen who did not return from the campaign and the 775 who were wounded in a campaign with I am intimately acquainted. This was not a cost-free conflict. They never are and the Argentinians who fought and died for their country were ever present in my mind and I honour them as well.

However, I also spelt out a warning to Britain’s leaders; the aura of power which Britain will need in what is going to be a big and dangerous century is itself in danger of being lost. London is daily retreating from sound national strategy into a ‘recognise only as much threat as we can afford’ view of the world. Given that warning what was achieved back in 1982 is as relevant to today’s Britain as past Britain.

My theme was British élan - the determined pursuit of a just strategic goal with a style and assurance that is itself power. Élan is something more than men and kit. It is a strategic brand that can change things even before a bullet is fired. 1982 saw a Britain that like today had retreated into a muddled foreign and security policy with strategy made elsewhere. 1982 saw a country in conflict with itself with many of the same doubts and tensions as today. And yet somehow the British armed forces defied the all-pervading sense of national decline of the time and lifted the country above the management of decline so beloved of so much of the political and bureaucratic elite.

Thirty years ago through valour and sacrifice three invaluable victories were won. First, a fundamental principle was defended which was far bigger than the islands or the Islanders – the right of self-determination and the use of great power to that end. Second, ally and adversary alike was shown that the spirit of Britain pertained and that an old great country still understood how to exercise strategic influence. My friend Professor Gwyn Prins told me that when he was in the Advisory Group to former Soviet President Gorbachev back in 1990 Gorbachev told him that it was the Falklands campaign that in part convinced him that the Soviet Union could never win the Cold War. Gwyn also told me of a senior Russian who recently remarked that, “the things we once admired about Britain are today the things that you despise”. Third, a tired and fractious British people at the end of a long, tired and fractious decade were reminded that Britain was more than a place, it was an idea in which still to believe. No post-imperial basket-case but a powerful modern country that could when push came to shove distinguish between values and interests; principles and parochialism.

Where next for British influence? Today a very new idea is needed; an all-national unity of effort and purpose. That will mean inviting all in these islands to be British, rather than trying to turn Britain into what my old friend Lord Glasman calls a mini-United Nations. This is mission critical as we sink ever deeper into the swamp of political correctness that is eating government and society from within with self-doubt.

Strategically and militarily, as Britain move towards a 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review ‘strategy’ will need to be put back into ‘strategic’. For Britain’s armed forces that will mean a modest but nevertheless global role alongside a maritime-strategic America, those Europeans still able and willing to face up to their security responsibilities and the rebuilding of old relationships in the Commonwealth. Central but by no means exclusive to British influence will be the creation of truly joined-up armed forces in which no one service owns land, sea or air and which are themselves part of truly joined-up security policy led by a national strategy worthy of the name. State-of-the art armed forces that are projectable, deployable and sustainable built of a tight concept of fighting power for which the British armed forces are renowned.

Above all, Britain’s leaders must hold their nerve, just like Margaret Thatcher back in 1982; all the basic components are in place for a powerful modern navy, army and air force. This century is not going to get any easier and like it or not whatever happens in there is no hiding place for Britain. Britain will need its capable armed forces.

Thirty years ago the mission was not simply to rescue the Falkland Islanders from a brutal dictatorship, critical though it was. It was to save Britain from a visionless self and to make a proud people feel again the right to be proud by being on the just side of right.

As Europe crumbles and America stumbles Britain is thus faced with a choice: to retreat into irrelevance and put up with whatever an unjust world throws at it; or to galvanise itself as back in 1982 and set out to shape the world for the better. “For God’s sake, act like Britain”, former US Secretary of State Dean Rusk once demanded of George Brown. In 1982 Britain’s armed forces did just that and showed the world a great country that could rise above the daily grind of party game and blame to which today the British people are too often subject.

There is no greater honour I have ever been or will ever be accorded.

Julian Lindley-French

Joint Strike Fighter II: The Best is the Enemy of the Good?

Alphen, the Netherlands. 2 April. Today is the thirtieth anniversary of the 1982 Argentine invasion of the Falklands about which I will say more later in the week. Last week I wrote a piece about the spiralling out of control costs of the ‘Fifth Generation’ F-35 Lightning II all-singing, all-dancing multirole combat aircraft. A long supporter of the F-35 I have become profoundly concerned that the ‘balance’ between cost, value, capability and delivery is now so adverse for the non-American members of the US-led consortium that alternatives must be considered. My focus in the last piece was on F-35B and F-35C, the navalised versions of the aircraft, but my concerns apply across the range. Not surprisingly I received a fairly heavy carpet-bombing from the airmen of several nations supported by their allies in certain defence companies. Therefore, in the interests of fairness I went back and did more research and confirmed a simple truth; the unit cost of each F-35 has now reached astronomical and quite frankly indefensible levels.

The research was further encouraged by comments from two very senior military people whom I respect and like enormously. One is a very senior British ex-naval officer and the other a senior Dutch ex-air force officer. The Royal Navy man expressed real concern to me as to whether some twenty years into the project the short and vertical take-off (STOVL) F-35B will ever work. The Dutch air force officer recalled the time in the late 1990s when he was the Dutch Defence Attaché in Paris and was acquainted with a study into the relative costs of the F-35 compared with the French Dassault Rafale fighter. At the time the Dutch could have bought 85 F-35s for the price of 58 Rafales.

Compare that figure with those of today. The 2012 fly away costs for each Dassault Rafale, Eurofighter Typhoon and F-35 are as follows: Rafale $90.5 million; Eurofighter Typhoon $104 million; F-35A $197 million; F-35B $237.7 million; and F-35C $236.8 million. The F-35 will also incur in-life costs of over $1 trillion over a life-cycle that was conveniently stretched out some time ago from a conventional thirty to a highly suspect fifty years. What technology today enjoys such a lifespan even if one can separate the platform from the systems on board?

To be fair the alternative I suggested for the British and their two new super-carriers was to buy FA-18s off-the-shelf but this option would also involve cost. Indeed, whilst the 2012 fly-away costs for the FA-18 would be some $66.9 million that would be balanced out by the likelihood that the plane would be obsolescent within twenty years.

The causes of this procurement mess are themselves telling and reveal (not for the first time) original cost and performance estimates that never stacked up. Moreover, as a precedent for revolutionary US-led multinational procurement co-operation of a cutting edge ‘big ticket’ aircraft F-35 is a sorry tale.  A March 2012 Forbes article by US defence industry insider Loren Thomson offers six US reasons for the F-35 procurement prang which shakes my British/European confidence in the project to the core. First, whilst the F-35 was to be procured on a plan to hold down costs the plan has been simply ignored with the economies of scale central to the plan based on massively inflated numbers. Second, cost estimates for the F-35 were issued that no-one understood. In 2011 the Pentagon gave figures to the US Congress that the politicians could not understand and which actually undersold the aircraft. Third, whilst Lockheed Martin, F-35’s prime contractor, has been repeatedly blamed by the US Government for cost increases the bulk of such cost increases have been caused by the US Government. Specifically, Washington has changed the way it calculates support costs (whatever that means) and then blamed Lockheed Martin. Fourth, F-35 costs were never put into a meaningful competitor context, such as a detailed cost breakdown of alternatives. Fifth, the long-term consequences of delaying the F-35 programme have never been spelt out, nor indeed the impact of the F-35s rising costs on other key defence programmes. This is particularly important for the non-US members of the consortium. Sixth, the US has routinely sent the wrong signals to domestic and foreign audiences about Washington’s commitment to the F-35. Pentagon insiders attack the project on an almost daily basis.

Four things come out of Thomson’s study. First, the US has little understanding of what multinational procurement co-operation really means. Second, this is what happens when project engineers and their military counterparts operate beyond proper management. Third, what oversight has been forthcoming from Washington has too often come in the form of competing requirements from different services.  Fourth, there is always a price to be paid by partner taxpayers for investment without influence. Indeed, this is a mess made almost entirely in America.  Thompson offers a stark warning. F-35 “...is the story of what happens to major technology programs in a balkanized, distracted political system when there is no danger to push them forward. Bureaucratic and personal agendas fill the fill the vacuum once occupied by the threat, and so programs seldom stay on track”.

Now, as a European taxpayer I am still prepared to fund this aircraft if I can be convinced that it will give European forces the tools to do their respective jobs at reasonable cost and risk over the fifty years claimed. However, that is not at all clear from either the airmen or the defence-industry people telling me I am wrong.  Indeed, I fear I am being sold a pup. So, just please tell what am I really going to get for my money, when and for how long?

The aim of F-35 was a military super-Ferrari on the cheap. However, as one senior officer put it to me, “we have ended up with a cross between a Ferrari and a Fiat”. That is one very expensive Fiat!

F-35: the best is the enemy of the good?

Julian Lindley-French

Bradford: The Coming Crisis of European Democracy

Alphen, the Netherlands. 30 March. Strange week this. I have just emerged form hospital after an operation on my right eye. So, this piece is even more ‘one-eyed’ than normal. My wife thinks I am mad even writing this. However, a political earthquake took place last night in the city of Bradford, in my home county of Yorkshire, that is relevant not only to Britain but could well signal a coming crisis of European democracy – the revolt of the people against the professional political caste. The defeat of the long-incumbent Labour Party by George Galloway, a populist, self-promoting left-winger long used to conning the politically gullible, is quite simply stunning.

With a large Asian community the anti-war stance of Galloway’s Respect Party on both Iraq and Afghanistan was always going to appeal. However, the sheer scale of Labour’s defeat and the collapse of both the Conservative and Liberal-Democrat vote heralds something much more profound. Quite simply Bradford showed an electorate not apathetic as the mainstream parties like to claim, but actively hostile to mainstream political parties and politicians. It is a phenomenon evident across Europe, not least here in the Netherlands where right-wing populist Geert Wilders represents a growing disillusionment with cosy elites and a move towards more extreme politics.

Why is this happening? Regular readers will recall that I have often warned about the European democratic deficit and the rise of a Euro-Aristocracy. However, the professional political caste is not only limited to ‘Brussels’, but is evident across all European countries. My own country, England, is a case in point as its political leaders show all the signs of becoming just such a caste. Both Prime Minister David Cameron and Labour leader Ed Milliband belong to this caste. They went straight from university politics into a special advisor position with a minister and then onto a safe elected seat which was set up for them to win by their respective party establishments prior to then being fast-tracked into a ministerial position. Neither of them have any real-life experience of the world outside the rarefied world of high politics. According to the House of Commons in 1982 the number of such people in Parliament was some 4%, in 2001 it was 14% and today it is 25% with almost all of them either in Government or the Shadow Cabinet (leadership group for the opposition).

The result is a new layer of influence between the governing and the governed. This has encouraged the rise of political lobbyists, single-issue special interest groups and think-tanks who seek to exert influence over the caste often at the expense of the people. Politics is thus seen by the caste as a narrow ideological game played out between small Westminster elites with lobbyists and activists acting as both seconds and the only constituencies of note. Politics beyond Westminster has thus become irrelevant to the point of being pointless. Indeed, the people are seen only as the distant objects of political and media management with their representatives in Parliament reduced to being merely the window-dressing of democracy, with little or no influence over the caste.

The most obvious example of this was how both the two leading parties not only failed to deal with hyper-immigration, but in Labour’s case actively encouraged it. The English people have always rightly been open to a reasonable level of immigration. However, according to a leaked secret Labour Party report what happened from 2000 onwards was the deliberate attempt by Downing Street political advisors to change England forever by a deliberate policy of mass migration so as to “rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date”. It was an ideological war between and within a small Westminster political caste with no regard as to the social and cultural consequences on ordinary English people who have had to live with the consequences. Indeed, such is England’s unhappiness that the caste must now resort to the use of draconian anti-racism laws to suppress the anger of a people who believe they have been conspired against by the caste to take their country away from them. Go to my home town of Sheffield if you do not believe me. The only way forward is for ordinary decent people of all creeds, cultures and colours to find a way to live together but the signs are not encouraging. The politicians caused this mess; they will not fix it.

Fast forward England’s unhappiness to Brussels, which has always been the home to a professional political caste. Every time I go the European Parliament I am shocked by the number of Members of European Parliament (MEPs) who are the ‘sons, daughters, family members of’ or at least well-connected to, national political elites across Europe. With the pressure now mounting for more power to be given to ‘Europe’ i.e. Brussels, the growth in influence of Europe’s political caste is likely to match the growing distance between Europe’s governing and governed. The abyss which already exists between the European citizen and Europe’s elite is not only a recipe for political corruption on a grand scale but could well herald the coming crisis of European democracy.

In both and England and the wider Europe there is a pressing need to get more real-life politicians into power who know what it is like to struggle to balance the weekly budget, to deal daily with unyielding bureaucracies, to confront discrimination and prejudice, who have known unemployment, and to face the reality of fractured societies in which mistrust, fear and even hatred stalk the streets.

If mainstream politicians do not move to reconnect with ordinary people there will be more Bradfords and more George Galloways and Geert Wilders across Europe. This is a dangerous political moment and our leaders need to start treating the rest of us with the respect we deserve.

Now I will go back to bed.

Julian Lindley-French

Joint Strike Fighter: How Not to Build an Aircraft

Alphen, the Netherlands. 26 March. F-35 Lightning II is a name to conjure with. Otherwise known as Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) ten countries are collaborating under US leadership to build a fifth generation multirole fighter that can apparently do everything and not be seen doing it – whatever it is it does. Last week BaE systems announced the opening of a $175m plant in Lancashire, England to build the things. Being a Yorkshireman this is a bad mistake in and of itself as nothing good has come out of Lancashire since the fifteenth century Wars of the Roses (which was not very good either). Suspiciously this announcement comes hot on the heels of news that the British Government is having yet another wobble over whether to buy the F-35B STOVL (Short Take-Off or Vertical Landing) version or the F-35C conventional aircraft-carrier version for the two mythical British super-carriers HMS Not at All Sure We Can Afford This After All and HMS We Can Afford Either the Ship or the Plane but Not Both.

Now, the reason I was compelled to pen this blog is entirely the fault of my Dutch wife, Corine (brave woman bless her). In her infinite, supreme commander way she decided that I needed to be compelled to stop thinking quite so much about work. Having heard me drone on about the models I used to build as a kid she bought me an Airfix kit (I think you call it Revelle in Yankdom) of HMS Iron Duke (known affectionately by its crew as the Iron Duck due to a tendency to waddle), the flagship of the grandest fleet of the greatest navy ever to sail the seven seas. It sat accusingly in its box for a year or so until no longer able to bear the shame I last week took the myriad of tiny pieces out of the box and began to ‘build’ it.

Unfortunately, I had failed to tell my wife of two important failings that had slipped between the cracks of nostalgia. First, as a shipbuilder I was complete rubbish. Second, my childhood purchases were invariably models of the German battleship Bismarck which with a firework inserted inside (a ‘banger’ in English vernacular) invariably and rapidly met a watery demise in the stream outside my house. It was a happy 1970s childhood. Entirely in keeping with past efforts some hours into the project both the glue and the paint seemed to have gotten everywhere except where intended. This project was clearly going to take far longer, cost more and become a real mess. Just like the F-35 Lighting II.

To mix my metaphors the F-35 is fast flying into a tipping point. Estimated at $237.7m per F-35B and $236.8m per F-35C costs have doubled since the original estimates of its manufacturer Lockheed Martin. Moreover, the plane will not now see service until sometime “after 2016”. Last month the Japanese warned they would cancel the contract if prices inflated further and Italy cut its order by 30%. This month the Pentagon announced that it was delaying an order for 179 F-35s which surprise, surprise will push up the price further. Having made a decision in 2010 to re-design the carriers for F-35C, the potential British flip-flop back to the F-35B (which has half the range and can carry half the weapons of the F-35C) threatens to destabilise an already precarious British defence strategy. The Dutch? The savagery with which they are cutting their defence budget and the rate of climb of F-35 costs means that they will probably only be able to afford one F-35 and only if they scrap the Dutch Army and Navy.

What has gone wrong? Essentially the F-35 suffers from what is known as the 80-20 problem; expecting a system to do too much too soon given the available and untried technologies being built into it on the budgets available. This has been compounded by the savage cuts to defence budgets that have taken place in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Moreover, the project management of Lockheed and its government partners has left much to be desired, further complicated by American concerns about technology transfers and the shifting needs of clients. The only saving grace is that it has made Europe’s incompetent weapons-makers look positively nimble by comparison.

What to do? For the Europeans there are two options – scrap or pool. Take the British as an example. In London’s position I would reconsider F-35 not simply in terms of cost but defence strategy. It is evident that with the US shifting towards a maritime strategy and with a main aim of British defence policy to have sufficient deployable military power on call to influence Washington the two aircraft carriers are more important than the F-35 per se. In such circumstances it would make far more sense to buy a proven system off the shelf, such as the US F-18 or French Rafale, and equip them with the latest avionics and weapons systems.

By adopting such an approach the British could afford a full fifty aircraft wing for the carriers, including airborne early warning. Striking such balances is one function of sound defence strategy. Alternatively, all the European F-35 end users (Britain, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway and Turkey) could pool their respective efforts and look for economies of scale and maybe invite Australia, Canada, Israel and Japan to form a new end-users group to exert more control over the bloated US-led procurement process.

If not I suspect F-35 will suffer the same fate as my Duck - it too will probably never be completed.

Julian Lindley-French

Sixty Years of Royal Duty

Alphen, the Netherlands. 21 March. Edmund Spenser’s 1590 Faerie Queen was an ill-concealed homage to Queen Elizabeth I, one of England’s greatest monarchs. “Ill can he rule the great that cannot reach the small”, he wrote (note the somewhat gender-bending concept of kingship in the sixteenth century). He could well have been writing of Queen Elizabeth II, who yesterday addressed both Houses of Parliament in the majestic St George’s Hall on the occasion of the official launch of her diamond jubilee; the celebration of sixty years on the throne. The fourteenth century gothic monument is the centre-piece of the Palace of Westminster and all that is left of the palace from which her eminent forebear ruled.

House of Commons speaker, John Bercow, demonstrating yet again his self-serving talent for the ill-timed and inappropriate, called the Queen, “the kaleidoscope queen’. He suggested that Her Majesty has been at the forefront of change as England slowly at first and now with great and ill-considered haste continues on its way to no longer being the England I once knew and loved. In fact the Queen has been the opposite. She has managed to confer upon a troubled country an aura of stability but has done so in the absence of nostalgia, which for an octogenarian monarch is quite an achievement. Indeed, she has been personally responsible in no small measure for much needed reassurance without which the revolutionary change and national decline that has taken place in her reign could well have descended into chaos.

Now, I am no royal flunky, far from it. Indeed, I find the whole edifice of the Royal Household at times absurd and arrogant. There are people within it who have really earned the royal patronage they enjoy because of the service they have given both society and country. There are also those within the Household who continue to look down their rather snooty upper-class noses at the rest of us in spite of having done little else in their lives than to have been born into the right family. Yes, twenty-first century Britain still suffers from such class nonsense.

So, why do I, a Yorkshire democrat, believe so firmly in the Queen and the institution of monarchy? It is a question those of you unlucky enough not to have been born English will doubtless find puzzling. The short answer can be found about a mile (no kilometres here) down the road in the House of Commons. The merest glance at Britain’s politicians is enough to convince most sane British people of the value of and need for a constitutional monarchy.

That said the monarchy can ill afford to be complacent. This most permanent of institutions has survived democracy precisely because it has been able to adapt and it will need to do so again. The affection in which Her Majesty is rightly held does not automatically extend to the institution of monarchy itself. The Queen has ‘ruled’ (she does not of course) with unusual intelligence and sensitivity to the sensibilities of an increasingly complex people and indeed those of the fifty-three other countries in her beloved Commonwealth. She remains head of state in some sixteen countries. She should, of course, have been Queen of America, but the Yanks were ejected from the Empire for failing to understand the difference between rugby and football and coming up instead with an extended TV commercial which is neither.  The only time her assured grip of the public mood slipped was in the immediate aftermath of the tragic death of Diana, Princess of Wales. She has also offered sage advice to twelve prime ministers, occasionally reminding them of the distinction between the interests of their political party and that of the country.

However, without wishing to be morbid Her Majesty is in her late-eighties. Soon Britain, if it lasts, will need to consider a future without her. That will be a shock to many of us. She has been a constant during all my fifty-four years. When she goes the undoubted majesty she has conferred on the monarchy will doubtless go with her. She is after all the last Imperial Britannic Majesty. His Royal Highness Prince Charles to my mind will be a good king, albeit in a very different manner as he too shares a deep understanding of the needs of a restless people. As for Prince William, he is very much a man of his era and far less stuffy than many in the Household that serves him. Therefore I am confident that in future the monarchy will indeed learn to be more modest, like the country it serves and like the monarchy here in the Netherlands.

So, not only am I confident that the monarchy will survive but it shall continue to enjoy my support and loyalty. That might, as I say, seem strange to foreigners, but it is simply our way of ordering power in a complex state. And, to have an institution at the head of state that is by definition bipartisan and above the political fray is to my mind a very real blessing.

Thank you, your Majesty for your sixty years of duty to our country. I remain a humble, loyal citizen of the country you head, but you will forgive me if I will never be your subject. Those days are gone. And no, I am not looking for a knighthood. An OBE (Order of the British Empire) would be nice though.

Lord Lindley-French of Bramall Lane

Marius Montius Caesar: A Latter Day Shakespearean Tragedy?

Rome, Imperial Capital. 19 March, 2012 AD. “Beware the ides of March” a Soothsayer warns Caesar. Marius Montius Caesar is made Dictator of the Roman Republic to save the Republic in the name of the Republic. Critical is the support Caesar enjoys from the heads of the two leading families of the Empire, Angela Portia Merkela, formerly of the Germanic tribe, and Nicholatus Minimus Sarkozius, formerly of Gaul. Silvius Brutus Berlisconius, who has been deposed by Marius as leader of the corrupt, bloated Senate, plots his revenge. He utters bitterly, “I do fear the people choose Caesar for their king. I was born free as Caesar, and this man is now become a god”. The Roman die is cast.

Brutus Berlisconius, one time friend of Caesar, is all too conscious that his electoral chances depend on his playing to the fears of the Plebs now gathering in their uneasy impotence on the Appenine Hill across the deep valley of the Circo Massimo from the Capitoline where this great drama is unfolding. Caesar, gripped by the acute vulnerability of his position, has a vision of the fate that awaits him. Fatalistically he accepts that death “will come when it will come”. So, charged with his duty to save Rome from itself Caesar goes to the Senate to explain his plan.

Caesar is slain. As Brutus Berlisconius plunges a bloody dagger into Caesar the Dictator utters his final words, “Et tu, Brute”. “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears”, cries Brutus Berlisconius, “I come here to bury Caesar, not to praise him”. Romans, he warns, would have been slaves under Caesar, before he departs to his luxury island for a party.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti is no Julius Caesar. He is a good man in a terrible position at a terrible time. However, his political (hopefully not personal) fate could be similar if he does not succeed in what is an almost impossible task – to drive down Italy’s public debt. As I walk the streets of this magnificent city and talk to Romans the mood here is one of uneasy calm.  The Italian debt hangs in the air like a gathering Shakespearean storm. The atmosphere is unworldly; a heavy calm before a cataclysmic social and political upheaval. Either Hannibal will bypass the city or the market barbarians will storm the ramparts. Cannae or Carthage?

My sources tell me that Monti sees himself being in power for no longer than one more year. He believes that not only will elections be necessary by then but that he and his technocratic government will have done all they can to stabilise Italy’s finances. If truth be told a year is probably nothing like enough time. Italy is a country wedded to debt. And, just like Caesar before him it was the failure of a corrupt political class that put the Republic in danger. Indeed, Italy’s politicians have traditionally survived on a system of patronage which has encouraged over-mighty subjects and special interest groups. Europe and the Eurozone was seen by many of them merely as a means to extend patronage via the cheap money that the Euro afforded. Indeed, the moment France and Germany broke the Euro’s stringent rules it became open season for many in the Italian elite to use government to over-spend.

Therefore, Monti faces a terrible choice.  If he does indeed go in a year or so and hands power back to a political class that shows little or no sign that it will mend its ways financial oblivion will beckon and Monti will be accused of a dereliction of duty. However, if Monti hangs onto power indefinitely he will be accused of being a latter day Caesar hell bent on destroying the ancient virtues and freedoms of the Republic. Italy, far more than Greece, will be the true test as to whether or not the Euro’s empire can survive the assault by the market barbarians. And, of course, Brutus Berlisconius waits in the wings.

Italy is a serious country with serious people who have deserved far better from their past leaders. In my years living in Florence, speaking the language, studying the place and the people I was constantly struck by the daily battle that was fought out between the state and the people. It is a battle that continues apace.  It is now one in which the future of Europe not just Italy is at stake. The Italian people deserve our support…and our vigilance.

As for the Eurozone crisis, the ides of March may indeed have come.  “Ay, Caesar, but not gone”.

Julius Livy-Cicerench

Obameron versus Merkozy

A NATO military base somewhere in deepest England. 14 March. I could tell you where I am but then I would have to kill you. I have just spent the day annoying NATO generals, the majority of whom are British, which is one of my purposes in life. Much of the day was spent by the British explaining the debt-fuelled contradiction that is likely to be Britain’s future defence strategy – to remain close to America whilst relying more on NATO. On the face of it such military parochialism might seem a world away from the Obameron high politics/grand strategy taking place in Washington.  It is not. Let me start with the high politics first.

Officially Obameron will consider the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, and of course the joint position the US and UK will likely adopt at May’s NATO Chicago Summit. It is also clear from the red carpet treatment PR-Meister Dave is receiving in DC that the Americans again see a wider significance to the ‘special (yawn) relationship’. After many months of the Merkozy duarchy assuming the right to speak for Europe Obameron are in effect formalising the new fault-line in the transatlantic relationship. Berlin and Paris be warned; Obameron will henceforth contest the European strategic piece with Merkozy.

Those of you out there who react to this statement with bewilderment and object to my suggestion that the German Chancellor and French President could be acting out of anything but the most altruistic of impulses have something of a point...but only something. The Eurozone crisis needed leaders and Germany and France had to act. However, like any power capital Berlin and Paris are complex places with a range of complex political and strategic motives.  A clear sub-text from the start of the duarchy has been the establishment of a precedent for the future leadership of Europe by Berlin and Paris. It is leadership that neither America nor Britain will ever accept.

Many continental Europeans simply do not understand this and they need to. ‘Liberty’, as defined by national parliamentary democracies exercising sovereign will, was precisely what the Americans and British fought for together and died together in their millions in two world wars. The ‘political’ system on offer today for future Europe is not parliamentary democracy. For one I desperately do not want my country to leave the European Union. However, the plutocratic/technocratic path the EU has now taken threatens a shared Anglo-American heritage in which I also passionately believe to make Europe safe for democracy.

This brings me back to my meeting here in xxxxxxxxxx. The fatal flaw in London’s logic is to equate NATO with the US. NATO is increasingly a European organisation in which the Americans have at best a waning passing interest. To rely more on NATO means the British relying more on continental Europeans. Not only are the defence budgets of said Europeans in meltdown, but even more importantly so is the political will to use legitimate force and crucially Britain's at best meagre political influence in Europe is also in meltdown.

The contradiction in British defence policy is thus clear.  On the one hand the British want to save money by relying more heavily on a NATO command structure in which the US has little interest and on European partners that either do not want to act with Britain or simply cannot.    On the other hand the British want to stay close to the Americans militarily even though that will cost a lot of money, especially so as the Americans are about to make the final break from a land-centric defence strategy with Europe at its core to a maritime strategy which does not at all have Europe at its core.

Is there a way out?  Possibly, but it is a long shot. First, Chicago must reaffirm the principles of national parliamentary sovereignty the defence of which is NATO’s core mission. Second, Britain, France and Germany must be seen to come together and reaffirm the idea of a united Europe established firmly on the principles of national parliamentary sovereignty. Third, the very practical defence pact that France and Britain share must be expanded to include Germany so that Europe’s new strategic triangle could then begin Europe’s long road back to strategic seriousness.

There is one thing that all parties to this schism need to understand fast; the stakes are very high indeed.  Fail and Obameron versus Merkozy could be just the beginning of a strategic realignment that would in time render the Channel wider than the Atlantic.

Mind you what could come next does not sound at all appealing – Romron versus Merkholl?  Heaven forbid Merkland-e!

Julian Lindley-French