NATO: Connected Forces, Connected Minds?

Alphen, The Netherlands.  23 July.  NATO must contend with two competing and contending inner-realities: a schism in Alliance strategic culture and concept, driven by deepening divisions over the world view and the future of the Euro; and the austerity-driven need for shrinking armed forces to work ever more closely together in a world in which the balance of power is tipping against the West.  It will not be an easy balance to strike.  Forever in search of said new balance NATO has launched the Connected Forces Initiative or CFI.  However, like most things NATO whilst the idea is good real questions remain as to the extent the member nations will really grip the challenge.  The bottom-line is this; the only way CFI can succeed is to be radical in both thought and act.  In effect, CFI is seeking what I call ‘organic jointness’; forces that not only act as one, but think as one.    

The Oxford English Dictionary describes “organic” as "an organised structure within a cell". Today that means an entirely new way of thinking about the relationship between the world, armed forces, technology, the societies they serves and. above all, ideas.   The specific challenge concerns how small military 'producers' meet their security and defence obligations in a very large and unstable 'market' in which the defining feature is and will be friction and turbulence and the defining factor cost.

'Connectivity' is the key. Indeed, ‘connectivity’ must become NATO’s driving mantra because the force most connected will be the force most likely to strike a balance between effectiveness and efficiency.  However, this in turn will require a complete change in mind-set amongst political and military leaders, particularly in Europe.  European armed forces can no longer compete on mass and quantity and NATO can thus no longer simply flood the ‘market’.  Rather, the Alliance needs to be able to make intelligent choices and identify critical points in the ‘market’ over which it can and must exert influence given challenges that will range from state failure to state conflict and all that lurks in between. 

In Europe a defence planning Rubicon has been crossed and yet too many military leaders talk as though this is a temporary blip before their return to greatness.  Indeed, given cuts to NATO Europe forces that is on average some 25% since 2008 European armed forces no longer have the size to 'think' as separate countries, let alone act as separate services.  To be properly connected armed forces will need a radical, unified concept of how best to a) exploit the five dimensions of twenty-first military effect - air, land, sea, cyber and space; b) recognise that a new inner-relationship must be sought with the US; and c) inject some real meaning into the woeful non-relationship with the EU.  That will require a NATO that can re-conceive of itself as a critical strategic node or hub at the core of a web of real strategic partnerships the world over with NATO Standards which promote effective ways of working acting as the Alliance’s core ‘product’.   This will be no easy task for an Alliance that still remains too much of a self-licking lollipop.

The connectivity revolution must start within the Alliance.  Critically, new thinking will be needed if the 'corporate memory' that has been built up so painfully over the past decade is to be properly exploited rather than shelved as lessons-learned and then lost. To that end NATO must far better, scientifically and systematically exploit exercising, training and education.  Exercising is a key but woefully ill-exploited change agent.  Too often the testing of concepts, experimentation and the taking of risk it implies is avoided in favour of of the formulaic and disconnected rehashing of the already known.

However, it is the connectedness of minds that will define CFI.  Transformed defence education is pivotal to CFI.  Indeed, for CFI to work there must be a much tighter relationship between the knowledge base, research, defence education and action based on an Alliance-wide defence education concept that both empowers the learner and ends the box-ticking culture that so bedevils defence academies.  In other words, learning must also become outcomes-based, life-long and enduring based on Alliance-wide education standards.  

Organic Jointness is thus at the heart of the Connected Forces Initiative built on the principle of connectivity.  The realisation of such a goal will demand a radical commitment to force quality that goes way beyond the rehearsed rhetoric of past NATO initiatives.  Things really are different now and unless the Alliance actively promotes the rigorous development of comparative advantage in thinking, concepts, technology and, above all, people it really will in time fade into irrelevance.   

NATO: connected forces, connected minds. 

Julian Lindley-French

Euro-Realism: Why We Need a New European Security Strategy

Alphen, the Netherlands. 20 July.  I am a Euro-realist, neither a Euro-sceptic, nor a Euro-fanatic.  My motivation is to drive through the fathoms of political fantasy and folly pouring forth from the current crisis, much of its cascading down from on high as a generation of failed political leaders try to hide behind a rhetorical deluge.  In December 2003 Robert Cooper formerly of the parish of Whitehall but for a long-time now a senior Brussels apparatchik produced a typically elegant and erudite European Security Strategy or ESS.  The aim was to give some common strategic direction to Europeans and their role in the world and inject some energy into the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy, or CFSP, in the citizen-busting jargon of the Euro-Aristocracy.  In spite (indeed because of) my concerns about the EU’s direction of travel I now believe that a new European Security Strategy should be drafted.  Why?

First, the ESS focused on what Europeans could do more effectively together, as such it went back to the principles of Europe’s founding fathers – the EU should only act where unity of state effort and purpose would make the sum greater than the parts. 

Second, whilst much of the ESS, and its 2008 follow-on the catchily-named Report on the Implementation of the European Security Strategy, remains as relevant today as 2003 it is politically tired.  The simple fact is that the past decade has crammed in a whole life-time of politics and even though implementation of the ESS has by and large ranged from the disappointing to the dire something is needed to remind Europeans that their Euro-world is not the only world on this planet.

Third, because the ESS is not the Euro.  Indeed, even if further European integration, driven as it is by the saving of a failed currency rather than loftier, more constructive goals, will sooner rather than later drive Britain out, it is vital that ALL Europeans together take another look at the world beyond their borders. 

Fourth, precisely because Britain is likely to remain over the medium-term Europe’s strongest hard security actor it is vital that a) Europeans consider a future EU security architecture in which Britain could be a partner rather than a member; b) demonstrate to Europeans and others that EU-life is not simply about the Euro and that there is an issue where ALL European member-states can work constructively together; and c) demonstrate that Britain’s commitment to a stable and secure Europe will remain absolute both through NATO and the EU.  One of the great and many failings of the current age is that so much of the good work done by the EU, often led by its three major actors Britain, France and Germany, has been lost in the Euro-scream.

Fifth, not only has there been a revolution in strategic affairs since 2003, there is likely to be a further revolution in strategic affairs by 2023.  That revolution needs to be examined, assessed and responses and ideas considered in a systematic and methodological manner.  Europeans will need to be proactive not just reactive.  What is clear is that whatever the institutional arrangements within Europe, who is in and who is out, such is the world in which European states reside that they are going to have to work together intensively to influence the big, dangerous events coming their way.  Europeans thinking big about big things is a prerequisite for a European Security Strategy, be it formal or informal. 

Sixth, for all its myriad failings and its tendency to be more reflective of crisis management within the EU rather than beyond, both the Common Foreign and Security Policy and its offspring the Common Security and Defence Policy need to be modernised.  Mired both geographically and functionally in complexity Europeans together face risks and threats both near and far ranging from social collapse to catastrophic terrorism on to hyper-competition through to state conflict Europe’s political leaders will need four quintessential commodities; forewarning, capabilities, credibility, but above all options. 

The simple strategic truth of this age is that the flag one puts atop an engagement, be it political and/or military, is as important as the force one sends.  The very fact that the West retains the option to engage and intervene under a political identity that is NEITHER NATO NOR the US is hugely important. 

It will be messy and difficult but ten years on from Robert Cooper’s triumph of Euro-pragmatism it is time Europeans re-drafted the European Security Strategy.  It may after all finally start Europeans thinking about the real question that now confronts them; how much are they going to have to pay for their own security, given that the Americans are about to pay far less?

Time for a dose of Euro-realism because only such realism is likely finally to get to Europeans to get serious about security.    

Julian Lindley-French

Blair and Brown: Jobs for the Boys

Alphen, the Netherlands, 18 July.  There is nothing that proves the essential corruption of modern political life than the sinecures handed out to failed ȕber-elite politicians who did their country grave harm.   The carefully-timed summer announcements that two former failed British prime ministers, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, are back is but the latest example of high political contempt for public virtue. Multi-millionaire Tony Blair has been appointed by Labour leader Ed Milliband as an advisor on “Olympic legacy”; for that read political advisor to Milliband in the run up to the 2015 general election.  Meanwhile, Gordon Brown has been appointed as UN Special Envoy for Universal Education, which could only have happened with London’s (and Labour’s) formal blessing.

These two men together conspired to do more damage to my country than any prior political partnership.  They quite simply misled the British people about their aims and their intentions to disastrous effect and like many millions I believed them.  Indeed, until the mid-naughties I had been a life-long Labour Party supporter.  Thanks to these two I will never again trust Labour with my country.

Their failure might best be summed up as the four ‘I’s; Iraq, ‘investment’, Scottish indepdence and immigration. All are testament to political hubris.  Evidence suggests Blair misled the British people over the Iraq War.  The false dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction led to hundreds of British troops being killed in a war fought on the most tenuous of legal grounds, and many tens of thousands of Iraqis.  This week, in a letter to David Cameron, Sir John Chilcott, who heads the Iraq Inquiry talked of a number of “unresolved disputes” triggered by Blair’s testimony, “…including the treatment of discussions in the cabinet and cabinet committees and the UK position in discussions between the prime minister and heads of state or government of other nations”.

Brown disastrously destroyed the public finances of the country, over-spending massively in the name of ‘investment’ and then tried to blame the mess on the world around him.  Had Brown maintained a commitment to sound finance Britain would be one of the strongest economies in Europe rather than being dragged through the deep morass of debt which was Brown’s legacy to Britain. 

With a referendum due in 2014 Blair’s flawed devolution policy has even opened the door to Scottish secessionists and could see the break-up of the United Kingdom. 

However, it was hyper-immigration which was the signature policy of both Blair and Brown and which has been a disaster for the country. This week the Office for National Statistics released the latest census. Since 2001 the population of England and Wales (excluding Scotland) went up a massive 3.7 million, much higher than thought to 56.1 million, and increase of 7%.  This was a deliberate policy choice that ran totally against the wishes of the massive majority of British people with the aim of ramming “diversity down the throats of the right” as one Blair aide put it and gerrymandering the vote.  Such has been the impact of hyper-immigration that English society in particular is still in a state of shock with Westminster having to resort to draconian race laws to suppress dissent and thus prevent an explosion in the powder keg that is contemporary England.  The England I once knew has been destroyed.  England today is a broken place where life is fair neither on Britons nor the many decent immigrants who make a contribution to British life.  A black friend of mine works on the front-line of the social and racial tensions caused by Blair-Brown.  He calls it a war.

What is strange is why the Labour Party is rewarding Blair and Brown whilst trying to pretend to the rest of us they have moved on.  It implies that nothing has in fact changed.  That come the general election in 2015 the same political con-trick will be employed to dupe millions of Britons like me sympathetic to social democracy and social progress.  What I fear is that again behind the no doubt slick social democratic façade will be a hard left agenda that will again lead the country to the very precipice of disaster.

Until the political class in Britain learn there is a real price to pay for failure at the top they will continue to play an all-too-cosy game in which backs are quietly and lucratively scratched and failure rewarded with directorships and fancy EU and UN appointments.  For that to happen there has to be real sanction for failure. However, as all the many faux inquiries have demonstrated into the many disasters these past fifteen years there is little appetite in the British Establishment for proper accounting.  There are endless inquiries into seemingly endless crises but no-one at the top is ever actually responsible let along sanctioned.  No wonder the British people despise politicians, particularly the cosy elite at the very top.

What one-time American President Andrew Jackson once said of a young Washington applies equally to modern day London, “I weep for the liberty of my country when I see…that corruption has been imputed to many members of the House of Representatives, and the rights of the people have been bartered for promises of office”. 

Blair and Brown: jobs for the boys.

Julian Lindley-French

Leviathan: The Great European Divide

 Alphen, the Netherlands. 16 July.  In 1651 English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote “Leviathan” in which he said prophetically, “The only way to erect…a common power, as may be able to defend [men] from the invasion of foreigners, and the inquiries of one another... is to confer all their power and strength upon one man, or upon one assembly of men...Leviathan”.  Hunkered down behind the Eurozone crisis is Europe’s key existential question; can the future prosperity, stability and, indeed, democracy of Europeans be afforded by one single super-Leviathan?

The current crisis has painfully exposed what is the great European divide; those who believe in a greater ‘Europe’ and those suspicious of grand constructs that not only threaten hard won freedoms but also seek to replace the nation-state.  Sadly, friendships have been torn asunder over this issue; I too have lost a couple. 

Many continental Europeans are used to so-called ‘dirigisme’, diktat by fiat from above.  As an Englishman grounded in a political culture in which fundamental individual freedoms are sacrosanct the very idea of a European Leviathan is dangerous political folly.  It would require trust in a European political caste over which I have no writ. 

Later this year I will have the honour of addressing a meeting of senior French politicians and officials.  ‘L’Europe’ is very much a concept that France has championed.  Whilst it is a perfectly honourable creed it, ‘Europe’, begs the ultimate political and economic question; what is the ‘finalité’? 

First, there would need to be a European head of state, a real European president supported by a real European government led by a cabinet replete with European ministers, covering all the many competences of a modern state; a single system of justice and policing, sound economic governance and all aspects of ‘Home’ Affairs. Second, Europe’s five hundred million or so very disparate peoples with their myriad of cultures, traditions, beliefs and languages would need representation via a single European parliament credibly charged with powers of political oversight and made up of Europe-wide political parties.  Third, there would need to be a real executive supported by a European ‘civil service’ charged with implementing European policy and held to account by a functioning parliament.  Fourth, there would need to be a European Finance Ministry supported by a real European Central Bank that would act as a bank of last resort, much like the US Federal Reserve.  Finally, and critically, any such ‘state’ would send European citizens to their deaths in war in the service of a real European Army, Navy and Air Force.   

To make that work France would need to be scrapped, the French Government in Paris reduced to being little more than an English county council or more aptly a French departement.  Parliamentary democracy in France would be diluted some tenfold as by ratio of population to representation the size of European parliamentary constituencies increased in size some tenfold.  French national control over all main tax-raising powers and indeed all other aspects of sound money would be handed over to the European finance ministry.  The French would also need to abandon their armed forces, its military traditions, history and glory and subordinate it to a European Army.

Of course, money is the root of all evil.  The Europe on offer today is one of mutual impoverishment, which makes it different to the 'Europe' of yore.  For the first time European integration pre-supposes little or no economic growth.  In the past ‘Europe’ has been built on the transfer of surpluses from the taxpayers of the formerly rich north and west Europe to those of the poor south and east Europe.  How long can Western European politicians impose such transfers on their newly impoverished taxpayers in the name of Europe before they revolt? 

For me ‘Europe’ can only ever work as a tight alliance of nation-states in which the political centre of gravity remains national sovereignty under national parliamentary control ‘harmonised’ into a tool for strategic influence, both within Europe and beyond.  To that end the place of Brussels is to serve the European state, not replace it.  I will never compromise on this point. 

Shortly before his death Hobbes said, “I am about to take my last voyage. A great leap in the dark.”  He could well have been speaking of the giant leap into the political dark that is now taking place in Europe.  Ultimately, a European Leviathan would be an insult to the tradition of English and Scottish political thought that made parliamentary democracy possible – Hume, Locke, Mill, Smith et al.  And, if friendships are lost because I will not compromise on this fundamental political principle, then so be it. 

A European Leviathan; be careful what you wish for.

Julian Lindley-French

Will Someone Please Save Europe from Belgium?

Alphen, just over the Dutch border from Belgium.  Friday, the 13^th.  Will someone please save Europe from Belgium?  The influence of this chocolate superpower is growing by the day.  Now, my own country, Her Imperial Britannic Majesty’s Dis-United Kingdom, has made the odd mistake over the years.  We are good at mistakes. Indeed, London is currently working through Britain’s new foreign policy manual; “101 Mistakes To Make Before You Collapse”.  Perhaps Britain’s greatest mistake came at the very height of Empire – we made Belgium!  Yes, I know, it is a terrible admission to make and hardly a testament to sound British judgement.  Sorry.

The 1839 Treaty of London was a British-led deal between the Great Powers, the Dutch and the “Kingdom of Belgium” to create a buffer between the French and the Dutch.  Belgium was to be perpetually neutral and Britain was to guarantee Belgium.  Now, having led Western Europe’s only failed state to the heights of its ‘glory’ it is Belgians leading the way towards something all the more ambitious - a failed European super-state. 

Eveywhere I turn there are wild-eyed and ever so slightly dishevelled Belgians leading calls for the Super-Onion.  Be it Onion supremo ‘President’ Herman van Rompuy, or Chief Euro-Parliamentary Onionista Guy Verhofstadt.  Everywhere I turn Belgians are telling me I have no alternative but to bow to the ‘power’ of Belgium, sorry Brussels, and scrap my country so that Belgium can be made to work.  Did I miss something?

The latest piece from the chocolate superpower goes under the characteristically misleading title of “The European Council and the Community Method” (no, it is not some form of bizarre group sex but one does need a good smoke after reading it).  Written by one of those consummate Onion insiders Philippe de Schoutheete, former Belgian Ambassador to the Onion, it is a true horror story.

Like all good horror stories the paper starts by presenting the very essence of normality.  Europe was made up of a series of cozy hobbit-like shires nestling in the green and pleasant vale that was 1950s ‘Europe’.  Because the Hobbits had no issues that divided them they all agreed to come together to grow a European Onion.  However, because they were all as lazy as hell and did not really trust each other one little bit they also agreed to create something called the European Omission, whereby they all pretended to ignore their many disagreements and let some bloke called Manuel, a Portu-Belgian, decide things for them.  Of course, the Belgians maintained ultimate control by making their own lad Herman, King of the Belgians and President of Europe at one and the same time.  After a particularly damp period the Onion went mouldy and the only way to save it was to make the Omission responsible for ‘growth’, overseen of course by Herman.

And then the descent into horror quickens.  The good Ambassador cites the secret Treaty of Lisbon which the Belgians, sorry Brussels, had imposed after French and Dutch Hobbits had rather objected to their country being taken away simply to save Belgium.  The Belgians having given this democracy thing a try demonstrated that it did not work but avoiding a Belgian government for many years and decided this would also be good for Europe.  Thus, the only solution was to recast the Onion in the image of Belgium and overseen by the sprouts in Brussels.

At the end there is nowhere to run.  There is no life after debt.  Sooner or later the Onion crushes all before it and Europe is finally turned into Belgium; a happy but broke place where the people live happily ever after, love each other deeply but have no say over anything. At least the beer is good.

To be fair, the Ambassador is right about the essential challenge of our Euro-time; “One may ask whether the true debate today is not between the Community method and intergovernmental decision-making, but rather between governance and government”.  For those of you not-versed in Onion-speak the meaning is simple; is there any way we Hobbits will ever again trust the Muppets who have created this mess?  Moreover, is there any way that we can be convinced to give Belgium, sorry Brussels, even more power but ask less questions.  For that is what at the end the good Belgian Ambassador is offering.

He concludes with a warning.  “No political system can survive without giving hope to its citizens. Europe has been a great channel of hope for several generations, including mine. And today? It is not hope that encourages integration, it is market fears. Is this enough? What we see around us, rather, is hopelessness. Many Europeans do not see a light at the end of the tunnel. Who will bear a message of hope, if our leaders and institutions do not?"  Hope springs infernal - there is no life after debt but the Onion.   

British Prime Minister William Pitt once described Belgium as a “pistol pointed at the heart of England”.  It is about to be fired, if they can find the bullet.  Belgium - coming soon to a town near you. 

Julian Lindley-French

Can the Franco-British Strategic Defence Relationship Survive?

Alphen, the Netherlands.  11 July.  Can the Franco-British strategic defence relationship survive? Yesterday, at the close of a modest lunch in Downing Street, British Prime Minister David Cameron said he had, “found much common ground” with French President Francois Hollande.  Following discussions ranging from the Eurozone debt crisis to Syria and Iran Cameron talked of a “strong relationship” and that both agreed the planned increase of the EU’s budget to €14 billion ($25 bn) by 2020 was “unacceptable”.  Clearly, the many issues of contention, such as France’s call for a financial services transaction tax, were either avoided or kept secret.  Cameron only hinted at the fundamental issue dividing the two countries; “We are clearly better off within the European Union…but I don’t think Britain is happy with the current relationship”. 

The Franco-British strategic defence relationship matters. First, it is a key European-European state relationship beyond EU competence.  Second, it is perhaps the only European relationship willing to think big about military matters in a very big military world.  Founded on two landmark defence agreements the relationship has long been a strategic cornerstone.  The 1998 St Malo Declaration seemed for a time to have resolved tension between NATO and the EU’s defence ambitions and paved the way for the now moribund Common Security and Defence Policy. 

On 2 November, 2010 the Franco-British Defence and Security Treaty was signed and heralded a new dawn in the two countries’ strategic defence relationship.  The treaty called for “mutual interdependence” and the sharing and pooling of defence materials and equipment, the building of joint facilities and “mutual access” to each other’s defence industries.  In addition there were agreements over nuclear stockpile stewardship, a new framework agreement for exchanges on operational matters and a proposal for a Combined Joint Expeditionary Force.  At the time there was also agreement that Britain and France should work together on the next generation of aircraft carriers.  However, the British decision to revert to the use solely of carrier-based short and vertical take-off aircraft effectively scrapped that line of co-operation.

Two other developments have undermined the relationship. First, the Eurozone crisis has pitched Anglo-French relations into uncharted waters inevitably affecting the strategic defence relationship. France is not only at the heart of the crisis whilst Britain is fast becoming a full-paying third-class member of the EU, Paris has always seen such agreements as a step on the road to a full-blown European defence construct to which Britain is implacably opposed.  Economic union will in time make that more likely not less.  Second, the 2010 treaty came at a time when Cameron was still early in his premiership and was hoping to ‘rebalance’ Britain’s relationship between Europe and the US.  However, such a rebalancing pre-supposed a Britain that would not be forced to choose between its economic relationship with Europe and its strategic defence relationship with the US.  The January 2012 shift in US defence posture towards East Asia will indeed over time force Britain to choose. And, given the Great European Defence Depression the British are rightly going with the Americans, even though that will have its own problems.   

Given those pressures it will be a miracle if the Franco-British strategic relationship survives…but survive it must for the good of all.  In the short-term some sensitivity will be needed.  The British must not under-estimate the attachment of the French to the Euro as a symbol of the French view of Europe.  The French must stop lecturing the British about said view of ‘Europe’, and stop attempting to subordinate Britain to French ambitions and the bill that goes along with them.

Sadly, the toxic chemistry between the two countries makes trust a rare commodity.  Sometime ago I had a chat with a French four-star general whom I like and respect.  The conversation was not easy.  He told me a story of a recent deployment by the French aircraft-carrier Charles de Gaulle, which had been escorted by a British frigate.  He claimed that Paris learnt later that the frigate only had orders to protect itself.  He even called the British “perfidious”.  I checked.  Not only was mon general wrong, but London found working with the French proved difficult because agreed operational schedules were never maintained.  What is clear is that Paris does feel let down by London at times and has a point.  Britain and France need to rise above this kind of thing.

The road ahead will be rocky.  Cameron’s contradictory argument that more European integration is needed, but that non-integrating Britain is better off in the European Union is patent nonsense.  Something is going to have to give and unless the two countries can demonstrate a genius for statecraft both have lacked for many years then it is hard to see the Franco-British strategic defence relationship surviving.  That would be a shame given the world in which these two middling powers are moving.

Julian Lindley-French

All at Sea

Alphen, the Netherlands, 09 July. Admiral, the Lord Nelson, one-time senior naval super-person, once said that, “Desperate affairs require desperate measures”.  Had he attended the Royal United Services Institute Future Maritime Operations Conference 2012 in London he might have amended that to read, “Desperate affairs require desperate measures…and some new, radical, but above all strategic thinking”.  I came away from two days of debate with senior naval persons from many lands with a profound sense of ‘gap’ between the big, strategic role navies will and must play in the twenty-first century and the small, tactical thinking of those charged with making the case for future navies, particularly the British. 

Most telling for me was a breakfast meeting I attended to consider ‘sea-basing’.  I had prepared a major report for the head of the Royal Netherlands Navy to develop creative thinking in this area.  My intervention to that effect was met with the resounding thump of a good idea hitting the deck and being ignored.  It left me with a profound sense of senior military officers being simply unable or unwilling to think radically, unable to make a compelling case for expensive navies, and only really willing to listen to each other.  The rest of us were…tolerated.

This big futures twenty-first century will place Western navies right at the heart of strategy; influence, deterrence, dissuasion and defence.  However, we talked about almost everything but that – peacekeeping, supporting civil-military relations, counter-piracy, counter-drugs, supporting Afghanistan from the sea etc.  They are all important but they are not core business and we really must look beyond Afghanistan.  We only just touched on AirSea Battle and the access denial/area denial debate.

At times I thought I was attending a kind of floating politically-correct hell.  One academic offered a ridiculous, cartoon vision of modern Britain.  However, being of an ethnic minority Whitehall political correctness demanded all and sundry celebrate such nonsense.  It explained a lot.

Without a clear strategic ‘narrative’, and a means to sell it, strategically-inept politicians faced with ever more strident demands from the pressure groups and single-issue lobbyists who now infect democracy will cut navies to the point of strategic irrelevance.  In that event the world-wide strategic brand that is still the United States Navy, and to some extent the Royal Navy will be finally laid to rest and with them a key tool of strategic influence will be lost.  As I was speaking the British Defence Minister, Phillip Hammond was on his feet in the House of Commons announcing the Army 2020 plan by which the British Army will be cut from 102,000 to 82,000 over five years.

The conference at least offered a glimpse of the future.  This was the Anglosphere at sea.  In addition to the UK, senior naval speakers came from Australia, Canada, Ghana, New Zealand and the US.  There were no French, German, or Dutch speakers, although an impressive Italian Rear Admiral spoke.  Having been in Rome the previous week it is clear the Italians do not wish a) to be left alone in the European Onion without the British; or b) let go of the coat-tails of the Anglosphere.

Tellingly, I was upbraided for my suggestion that all was not well either between the three British services nor inside NATO.   That response demonstrated to me the kind of ‘steady as you go’ thinking that bears no relation to the mess in which we all find ourselves.

What is needed is a new concept of naval power which combines global reach with a shared warfighting ethos that in turn reflects a new balance between manpower and technology.  This concept requires in turn all the serious navies represented at that conference to learn far more effectively from each other and that means first and foremost learning how to learn.  That was not at all apparent and yet, ironically, that can be found in Army 2020.

Gentlemen, the bottom-line is this; the economic depression in which we are mired will likely get worse before it gets better.  Countries such as Britain will not be afforded the chance simply to get off the world for a bit to fix it.  Therefore, if the future navy that will be needed is to be afforded in sufficient numbers over a sufficiently reasonable timeframe at a cost that I can bear then you will need to build a much more coherent case with the Army and Air Force to forge the kind of organic jointness implicit in the Army 2020 plan, and across government. 

Given that reality my sense is that the leadership of Western navies (especially European navies) are being nothing like radical enough neither in their thinking about ways, ends or means nor in the building of all-important partnerships – both civil and military.

 

If we can get politicians thinking about navies they might just begin to think strategically. It is time to think radically about OUR navies otherwise they really will be all at sea.

Julian Lindley-French