Freeing Japan

Alphen, The Netherlands. 24 July.  Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “I like the dreams of the future, better than the history of the past”.  To nowhere does this Jeffersonian aphorism apply more than contemporary Japan.  With Sunday’s clear victory of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party in elections to the Upper House of the Diet, Japan’s Parliament, Japan maybe about to cross a threshold between a challenging past and a challenging future.  Japan must be set free to play its full role on the world stage where it belongs. Why Abe and why now?

 

More than any other country Japan is still seen by many through the lens of the apocalyptic political settlement imposed upon Tokyo by the victorious Americans in 1945.  That must end.  World War Two’s other aggressor power Germany is steadily and rightly emerging as a respected leader on the European continent.  Berlin has earned the right to play such a role because Germany has transformed itself into a model democracy and a vital pillar of the liberal international order.  Japan is also a long supporter of the same liberal order and as competition grows between those that justify power via prosperity and those where the people still get to have a say Japan stands as a beacon for liberal democracy in the world’s strategic centre of gravity - East Asia.

 

History as ever remains eloquent.  In 1902 Britain and Japan signed the Anglo-Japanese Naval Treaty.  Britain then worked with Japan to build the Imperial Japanese Navy.  Of course, history will also recount that in December 1941 Britain’s support for Japan backfired spectacularly when the self-same Japanese Navy sank HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse off what was then Ceylon.  However, Britain’s 1902 strategic logic was impeccable.  Faced with the rise of the Kaiser’s Imperial High Seas Fleet the security of the eastern British Empire could no longer be secured by even the mighty Royal Navy.  Modern day sequestered America looks ever more like over-reaching 1902 Britain as the sun began to set on the British Empire.  

 

Frankly, America’s Asia-Pacific-centric grand strategy and the new global balance of power that is driving change needs a strong but responsible Japan.  Japan is already the world’s fifth biggest defence spender and this year Prime Minister Abe ordered the first increase in Japanese defence expenditure for a decade.  Like it or not Japan faces a China that has been growing its defence budget by over ten percent per annum since 1989.  European liberals may hate it but it is power that is driving change in Asia not ideas.  Therefore, whilst the US plays a key role in Japanese security, Japan plays an ever-more-important role in American and world security.

 

Prime Minister Abe clearly understands the new strategic balance.  However, if he is to realise his ambitions for Japan and finally escape the shackles imposed on Tokyo in 1945 Abe will need to strike a balance between strength and responsibility.  He will also have to tread carefully.  Abe has already indicated his desire to scrap the pacifist elements of the post-1945 constitution imposed upon Japan.  He may well be advised to follow Germany’s step-by-step approach to ‘normalisation’.  Rather than radically alter the German constitution, which is still based on the 1949 Allied-influenced Basic Law, Berlin chose instead to progressively re-interpret the constitution against the background of change in contemporary international relations.  Germany’s Constitutional Court has played a crucial role in the legitimisation of the use of German force which started in the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia.  Japan has taken similar but very limited steps in support of humanitarian objectives in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. 

 

However, the challenge maybe Prime Minister Abe himself.  He is often accused of being a nationalist although that is much exaggerated by those who would use history to further constrain Japan’s international role and influence.  However, he is a radical and a patriot and can at time use intemperate language forgetting that for the powerful there is no such thing as a domestic audience. 

 

Equally, with majorities in both the Upper and Lower Houses of the Diet Abe now has an opportunity to move Japan and its international relations into the twenty-first century.  Critically, at least three years of stable government is in the offing together with an end to the ministerial merry-go-round which has helped make Japan an at times mercurial and unreliable partner.  

 

L.P. Hartley once wrote, “the past is another country”.  Germany has earned the right to lead because both the country and its people confronted a painful past.  Japan has never and will never confront that past in same way as Germany and Japan’s past may not quite be the foreign land it is to Germany, but it is today a distance place. 

 

Therefore, it is finally time to free Japan from the past…and for Japan to free itself.

 

Julian Lindley-French

Operation Irresolute Support

Alphen, The Netherlands. 17 July.  In 1842 Sir Charles Napier wrote perhaps the most succinct telegram in military history to mark his success at the end of the First Anglo-Afghan War - “Peccavi”, he wrote, “I have sinned”.  It was a play on words as Napier had just conquered what is today the Pakistani province of Sindh.  In another play on words NATO is ‘planning’ Operation Resolute Support to replace the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan in December 2014 at the end of major combat operations.  Resolute Support is vital if Afghanistan is to have any chance of a future that is other than ghastly.  Without full American and British backing Resolute Support will be a non-starter because they remain the West’s signature powers. 

 

Sadly, all the mood music I am picking up at a high-level in Washington and London is that if this mission goes ahead at all it will be neither resolute nor offer much in terms of support to Afghanistan’s tottery government.  The US and British Permanent Representatives (ambassadors) to NATO’s North Atlantic Council are rebutting perfectly sound military guidance on the grounds of cost.  Indeed, the political reflex now is to get out at any cost. 

 

The cost is indeed prohibitive.  Afghanistan costs the US taxpayer $110bn per year and it costs $1m simply to keep an American soldier in Afghanistan for a year.  Clearly, that burden will need to be reduced drastically. 

 

In January 2012 I wrote a piece entitled, “Beaufort: Why We Must Leave Afghanistan Now, Not End 2014”.  My sense then was that support for the mission at the highest political levels in both Washington and London was very soft and consequently the campaign was not embedded in a meaningful regional-strategic political, diplomatic and economic strategy.  Indeed, I recall a conversation with a very high-level British official shortly after I had published “Plan B for Afghanistan” for the International Institute for Strategic Studies.  From his remarks it was clear men and women were dying simply to keep an arbitrary December 2014 date with political failure. 

 

The US now says it will only stay in Afghanistan if the Kabul Government enters into “bilateral security arrangements” that offer American forces immunity from prosecution.  President Karzai will enter into no such agreement because he does not want to be seen to be accommodating the soon-to-be departed Americans as he faces potentially life-or-death elections in April 2014. 

 

Washington is locked into sequestration and with relations between Presidents Obama and Karzai close to breaking point the US is threatening a “zero option”; the withdrawal of all US forces by end 2014.  Meanwhile, and not for the first time, David Cameron is demonstrating yet again an inability to grasp the strategic implications of his political short-termism.   

 

Even if Resolute Support does finally go ahead for the first such time in NATO history Britain will lose the deputy commander slot of a major Alliance mission.  Incredibly Germany and Italy are offering to take the lead in Britain’s absence.  In fact Berlin and Rome are also playing narrow politics with Resolute Support as they have no intention of leading anything.  It is simply an attempt to mask their respective failures in Libya and Mali. 

 

London says that whilst it will support the new Afghan army training academy (‘Sandhurst in the Sand’) it will do no more.  Britain “has done its bit” according to Downing Street.  The timing could not be worse.  Britain is about to make NATO the centre-piece of its 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review.  London once again will be seen to be saying one thing and doing another. 

 

The Taliban are watching on with deep satisfaction as Western ‘strategy’ collapses and see no reason to enter into meaningful peace and reconciliation talks.  Indeed, their attacks are increasing in both scale and volume. In spite of real progress on the ground over the past two years Afghanistan today looks increasingly like 1989 on the eve of the Soviet withdrawal. 

 

A desperate race is now on to establish credible Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) prior to NATO’s departure.  Indeed, whilst the Afghan National Army (ANA) is making real progress it still looks and acts nothing like a modern army.  Without training, mentoring and above all credible air power there are real questions as to whether the ANA will stand and fight in the coming struggle.

 

The greatest honour both Obama and Cameron could afford the thousands of their men and women in their national uniforms who have been killed trying to make flawed Afghan strategy work is to properly commit to Resolute Support.  Indeed, if Napier were alive today he would send London an entirely different and far less succinct telegram. He would remind his political masters just why sacrifice was necessary. “Stamus contra malo” - “We stand against evil”.  If that is not the case then why on earth did we go to Afghanistan in the first place?  

 

As for the cost; what will be the cost of complete and utter failure?

 

Julian Lindley-French  

Chapeau France!

Alphen, The Netherlands. 10 July. A very senior British general said of Operation Serval in Mali that France had “set the standard” for crisis military interventions.  Praise indeed and not easily given. One can always tell when a crisis is being managed to effect as the press lose interest.  The challenge Paris faced when four thousand French troops arrived in Mali in February was complicated to say the least.  Tuaregs had taken control of northern Mali and sought separation.  They were supported by a  particularly nasty bunch of Islamists (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and the Mujao) who had profited (literally) from the chaos in neighbouring Libya.  To make things worse the Malian Army, or what was left of it, was in meltdown and the country’s political system with it.  Now, with the Tuaregs having signed a June peace deal, last year’s military coup leader having apologised and elections planned for 28 July Mali has at least a chance of a future.  How did the French pull off this genuine military success?

 

Critically, Operation Serval was built on strategic unity of effort and purpose underpinned by speed, mass, precision and sustained political and military momentum.  French forces, operating alongside unexpectedly effective Chadian colleagues, drove back the Tuareg separatists and their Islamist partners.  The very shock of the French intervention opened-up very deep divisions between the two insurgent groups.

 

French commanders proved particularly effective in co-ordinating both logistics and a range of allies and ad hoc partners under French command.  Critically, France was unequivocally in the lead and for the first time US and other allied forces operated to effect under French operational command.  This success is testament to the years of joint training and efforts to improve interoperability between French forces and those of its allies.  Indeed, Operation Serval is now a model for the force generation and command of a complex coalition, something that far from being a one-off is likely to become the norm.

 

French forces were also willing to recognise where they needed support, particularly for strategic air-lift (Americans, British and interestingly Russians), air-to-air refuelling and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (the Americans and others).

 

However, for all the undoubted military success two other factors proved critical.  First, speed of reaction.  Within hours of President Hollande’s go-decision French aircraft took off from Saint Dizier air base and flew ten hours to strike key targets in Northern Mali.  These strikes knocked the Islamist/Separatist coalition off-balance from which they never recovered.  These strikes were followed rapidly by the deployment of particularly effective French Special Forces.  Like the British in Sierra Leone in 2000 the shock of a front-line Western military force interceding was sufficient to influence events decisively. 

 

Second, the application of political and military tools took place against the backdrop of deep French historical knowledge of the Malian people, the country and the wider Sahel region.  Knowledge and contacts were vital factors in Serval's success.

 

In other words, France’s strategic 'brand' allied to expert use of force proved decisive.  It was not simply ‘what’ was intervening, but ‘who’ was intervening and how.  This is something the British political leadership might wish to contemplate as they replace strategy with austerity as the key driver of Britain’s defence strategy.  For the moment Britain’s armed forces still have a well-deserved reputation for excellence but any more cuts will render both them and their strategic brand broken.

 

However, perhaps the most decisive factor in Operation Serval was the joined-upness of a French government in crisis.  From President Hollande at the top of the power pyramid through the foreign and defence ministries and onto the service and intelligence chiefs and down to the force and operational commanders Serval was well-conceived, soundly planned, expertly generated and effectively executed.   

 

France was assisted by the strategic and tactical incompetence of their adversaries, as the British were back in the 1982 Falklands War against Argentina.  And, in reality one rarely gets the chance to choose one’s crises.  Mali was ‘doable’, whereas Afghanistan and Iraq were at the very limits of ‘doability’ and Libya on the edge.  It may be that future crises will not be so accommodating to either France or her allies.

 

Furthermore, with the conclusion of this first crisis phase the political battle for Mali is still to come.  The 28 July elections will at best be flawed even if they go ahead.  And of course Serval has not stabilised the Sahel as a whole, partly because the West thinks states, Islamists peoples. Therefore, not too much strategic should be read in to Serval.

 

Equally, the French military success in Mali should not be under-estimated.  Mali is a big and desolate place and as an example of both statecraft and military craft France has every right to be proud of Serval whatever happens next, wherever it happens.

 

Chapeau France!

 

Julian Lindley-French

Egyptian Democracy 2.0?

Alphen, Netherlands.  5 July.  In a master-class of under-stated British diplomatic fudgery Foreign Secretary (and fellow Yorkshireman) William Hague said of the Egyptian Army’s ‘soft coup’, “It’s happened, so we will have to recognise the situation will move on”.  Implicit in that statement is recognition that if Egypt is to create Egyptian democracy 2.0 one would not ideally start from here to paraphrase that old Irish joke. So, what should the West now do?

 

Four principles should be adhered to: the Army return to barracks as soon as possible; a real process of political transition begins; the EU and US closely coordinate their support for the Egyptian people; and Egyptian democracy 2.0 is given every chance to succeed.  

What is happening in Egypt is fundamental change.  One in four Arabs is Egyptian.  What happens in the most populous Arab state reverberates across the Middle East.  However, Morsi’s removal opens a very uncomfortable question for those in the West who believe in democracy at all and any cost.  Moreover, whatever one thinks of the Muslim Brotherhood and President Morsi he was elected with 52% of the popular vote, passed a constitution with the support of 62% of the electorate and has been forcibly removed from power by the Army after one year in office.  And, do not be misled by television pictures of Cairo’s Tahrir Square – 70% of a conservative Egyptian population ascribe to some form of Islamism. 

Although there is clear evidence that the now former President Morsi was resorting to ‘majoritarianism’, i.e. ruling (not governing) in favour of those who supported him and not the country as a whole, he remains the only legitimately elected president in Egypt’s history.  Morsi’s crucial mistake was his November 22nd, 2012 edict granting himself almost unlimited powers.  However, even given that mistake President Morsi should not have been removed from office after only year and for many of the 85 million Egyptians he remains the elected president.  Like it or not the Muslim Brotherhood must play a role in any future political settlement.  The alternative is unthinkable.   

However, sustainable democracy can only flourish when a) the majority of the people across the political spectrum share sufficient commonality of values; and b) all the political parties that represent them are prepared to live by democratic rules.  In Egypt neither of those preconditions for stable democracy exists.  There is no apparent common ground between the Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood and the many secularists and others who occupy Tahrir Square and who now ironically see the Egyptian Army as their political saviours.  In other words Egyptian democracy will take time.

So, where does Egypt go next?  There is a curious political phenomenon in the Middle East.  In those Arab states experimenting with democracy almost everywhere anarchy is close to breaking out or killing people in large numbers.  Whereas those Arab states that have retained a monarchy are for the moment relatively (and I stress relatively) stable.

How does this apply to Egypt?  The first order principle is to put aside scruples about perfect democracy and work with those in power to stabilise the situation. Specifically, that means helping the process of political transition towards enduring political institutions, a free press and an independent judiciary.  Nor is Egypt Syria even if experience of the past two years would suggest that unless the West pulls what levers it has Egypt too could descend into violence and no Egyptian deserves that.  And the West does have some economic and military levers.

Therefore, instead of investing in recreating another ‘democratic’ version of a Nasser, Sadat or Mubarak, the strong man who becomes part of the problem, political transition should focus on making the Egyptian Parliament the centre of political gravity.  Parliaments have rules for democratic engagement and those that flout those rules can be sanctioned as in any other parliamentary democracy.  Here the EU could play a pivotal role. 

The US has a critical role to play with the Egyptian Army leadership as Washington provides $2bn of military aid each year and it would be fanciful to believe the generals will not have a significant political role to play.  However, some legitimacy for its role could be derived if its call for national reconciliation leads to the stability upon which parliamentary democracy rests.  The Army would swear allegiance to a constitutional head of state but in whom little political power is invested even if such a leader needs to be a statesman recognised both nationally and internationally.  Mohammed ElBaradei comes to mind. 

It is of course up to the Egyptian people to decide their future.  Critical to any successful transition will be sufficient people of an Islamist political bent willing to support Egyptian democracy 2.0.    

What is the alternative?  There can be no democracy without stability and instability in the Middle East can be murderous.

Julian Lindley-French

Snowden: Why France is Angry

Alphen, Netherlands. 2 July.  It was as predictable, subtle and French as a first tasting of a Chassagne Montrachet Premier Cru – full of hidden complexity and fascinating ‘notes’.  French President Hollande’s condemnation of Edward Snowden-alleged American spying in Europe was dramatically shrill.  “We cannot accept”, the President thundered, “...this kind of behaviour between allies and partners”, before going onto suggest that France might now scupper talks on the proposed EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).  One could be forgiven for taking French ‘hauteur’ at face value were it not for the fact that my well-informed sources tell me that DGSE, the French external intelligence service, runs one of the most effective foreign intelligence operations in North America.  So, why is France angry?

 

Many in the French elite still believe that more Atlantic means less Europe and that the next five years or so will be critical for the European Project.  It is a zero sum game view of West-West relations that could potentially cripple the TTIP and which is already doing damage to NATO. 

The first evidence that France was seeking to block the TTIP came on the eve of the recent UK-hosted G8 Summit when Paris raised the thorny issue of French ‘l’exception culturelle’.  Paris demanded, in that ‘take it or leave it’ way that France’s partners find so endearing, that French cinema and other artistic endeavours be exempted from any transatlantic free trade agreement.  British Prime Minister David ‘Short-Term’ Cameron, desperate for a diplomatic success, failed to see (or chose not to see) that this was the very French end of a very French wedge.

Chancellor Merkel is also upset by alleged US spying.  This is partly because the state abuse of information is a sensitive issue given Germany’s past and she is in the midst of an election campaign.  However, German ‘irritation’ will soon pass.  First because most US spying on and in Germany takes place in partnership with German intelligence.  Second, because Chancellor Merkel believes the TTIP could help the Eurozone economies to become more competitive by creating a single market big enough and safe enough for export-driven growth.  Third, a transatlantic single market would potentially be big enough to make it in Britain’s economic interest to stay in the EU.   Fourth, the TTIP would provide a free market alibi for further German-led European integration.

The Paris elite buy none of that.  Anti-Americanism still runs deep along the banks of the Seine.  On the statist Left French political leaders have long cut their teeth on an abiding loathing of what they see as the rampant, inhumane and unfettered capitalism of the American model.  On the Gaullist Right American power in Europe has long been seen as an affront to French honour and a barrier to French ambitions to craft Europe around France. 

 

This anti-American reflex comes to the fore at moments of political and economic stress such as today, often in combination with a none-too-subtle ‘faux grandeur’.  President Hollande’s recent assertion that France would not be dictated to by the European Commission was at the very best political irony and at worst hubris.  Paris seemed to be saying to the Commission – by all means tell all other 27 EU members what to do...but not France.

In fact it is the Germans who most concern Paris.  France is only publicly going along with the TTIP because that is what Angela wants.  And yet implicit in the Merkel Plan is a free-market world view much closer to that of the dreaded and perfidious ‘anglosaxons’ than the statist traditions upon which France is built.

Sadly, the Paris elite simply cannot face today’s revealed truth; France’s ‘social model’ view of Europe is dead.  ‘Europe’ will only have a long-term future if the EU helps Europeans to earn their way in the world.  The EU will fail if it remains as it is today, a failing, ageing coffer dam creaking under the growing weight of a flood of change.  This is precisely what many on the French Left want the EU to be - 1950s analogue political engineering in a digital age.  The creation of the TTIP would be the first step on the road to a Europe competitive in a hyper-competitive world.

The bottom-line is this; if France continues to seek excuses to block TTIP talks Paris is aligning itself with the forces of the past rather than the forces of the future.  The irony is that it is forces from America's past that will probably in the end kill off the TTIP.  An Unholy Alliance is forming between American and French farmers all of whom demand protectionism. 

There is a final irony.  France and the US tried to agree a ‘no-spy’ deal similar to that which exists between the US and UK but they could not agree what constitutes spying.  That means the Americans could at any time reveal the extent of French spying on them. 

This whole episode reveals the Snowden story for what it is; a tragi-comic farce.  Jacques Tati meets Groucho Marx - now that would be fun!

Julian Lindley-French

Ich Bin Ein Westerner

Rome, Italy. 27 June.  The ghost of Diana’s temple stands hard by.  Rome’s Aventine Hill upon which I sit mocks the remains of Nero’s monstrous Palatine across the now desolate Circo Massimo.  Where racing chariots once thundered ageing joggers now shuffle.  Around me plump oranges contemplate their final fall as if awaiting some latter day Newton to measure their worth.  If the West was born in Ancient Greece it came of age here under the Roman azure skies of ‘i azzurri’.  “Ich bin ein Berliner”; fifty years ago this week President Kennedy made his famous defiant assertion of Western solidarity at the strategic fault line of the Berlin Wall.  What today is the state of the West?

 

Kennedy’s moment has passed into strategic folklore.  However, perhaps more enduring was a speech he made the next day in Frankfurt.  Responding to threats to the Atlantic Alliance by then French President de Gaulle in the name of ‘Europe’, Kennedy warned against those who would split NATO and “give aid and comfort to the enemies of the West”.  This quote came back to me as I stood last week in the Washington office of George F. Kennan, America’s great post-war strategic architect.

Kennedy continued, “The United States will risk its cities to defend yours because we need your freedom to protect our own”.  That was 1963; this is now.

Fast forward to a meeting I attended this week here in Rome.  A very senior NATO officer observed that the Alliance no longer does strategy.  Rather, NATO is today bereft of the ability to look up and out together by the deep, interminable and oft parochial political fractures at its peak.  Consequently, strategy has been trumped by bureaucracy. 

Today, the West needs three acts of strategic maturity.  First, Washington must overcome its bombastic partisanship and recognise that the rhetoric of leadership is empty if a state cannot govern itself to effect and by example.  Second, Europeans must look out of their self-dug narrow political trench and have the courage to face the world as it is, not as they would like it to be.  December’s ‘big chat’ about the almost moribund EU Common Security and Defence Policy should be about far more than declining defence budgets.  Europe’s place in the world and its collective influence over it is now very much at stake.  Third, NATO needs a new vision.  The Alliance is a, if not the, cornerstone of the Western world security order. 

A couple of nights ago I had dinner with General John E. Allen, one of America’s most distinguished and brilliant soldiers.  It was one of those evenings when conversation flowed freely across time and place in a restaurant on the Via Antica Appia down which Roman legions once marched.  What struck me about our discussion was a strategic truism that I will hold to my heart to the day I die; the world is a safer place when the West is strong.

Yes, the West has made mistakes.  Sadly (and eternally) that has always been the fate of power in complexity.  However, error is no excuse for retreat which is precisely what happens when strategy is superseded by bureaucracy.

Kennedy’s commitment to Europe cannot and must not be taken for granted.  What is needed is a reassertion of Western solidarity and nothing short of that will now do.  As in 1963 NATO will have a central but not exclusive role to play in a renovated Western strategic architecture.  The proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) will be at least as important.

However the new NATO (for that is what we need) must in turn be built on a new strategic contract between both members and partners.  This will include recognition that the US commitment to Europe is only as strong as European willingness to play a full security and defence role.  NATO itself must again become the focal point for the development of efficient and effective military capabilities.  Capable partners the world over must be given real access to Alliance strategy and thinking.  Above all, strategic unity and effort and purpose between four key European actors must be purposively established however hard; Britain, France, Germany and Turkey.

It is for that reason I bang on about British military capabilities.  It is not so we Brits can sing a hearty rendition of Rule Britannia once a year at the Last Night of the Proms and not feel ever-so-slightly absurd.  It is rather to underpin the Western strategic contract with sufficient hard power so as to keep America in, get Europe up so the West can again look out with confidence and purpose.

Lord Byron once wrote, “While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand; when falls the Coliseum Rome shall fall; And when Rome falls – the World”.  The Alliance is the latter day Coliseum.  If it falls or fades away then the West falls.  And the world will be a much more dangerous place for it.

Ich bin ein Westerner...and proud of it!

Julian Lindley-French

Losing the Global Race

Alphen, Netherlands. 23 June.  British Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) George Osborne said  that Britain must win “the global race”, which is probably a political metaphor for reducing deficit spending and increasing productivity.  At the crux of his efforts to claw back a further £11.5bn of savings have been further cuts to the British armed forces.  This coming Wednesday he will confirm more defence civilians will be sacked and contracts with defence industry will be renegotiated, although sensibly more money will be invested in cyber-defence.  So, why is defence being cut further and where does the 26 June Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) – a cut on top of all the other cuts – leave the British armed forces?

Speaking openly about the impact of more cuts the Head of the British Army Sir Peter Wall said, “We have got to the point in a number of parts in our set-up where we can’t go any further without seriously damaging our professional competence and our chances of success in the battlefields of the future”.  When serving generals speak out in public there is usually something amiss.   

On the face of it these cuts are designed to further reduce British public sector borrowing which has been stuck at around £119bn ($183bn) or 8% of the economy for the past two years.  In fact, the savings Osborne seeks for 2015-16 are driven by three political factors; debt psychosis, the prime minister’s political peccadilloes and the need for a political ‘war chest’ so that Cameron can artificially stimulate the British economy prior to the 2015 general election. 

Critically, the funding of several departments of state are to be ‘ring-fenced’ (protected) which means that some departments of state (including defence) will face deeper cuts than they ideally should.  The effect of this ‘ring-fencing’ not only undermines national security and renders the CSR utterly unbalanced but leads to downright perversity. 

This morning Labour luvvie Dame Helena Kennedy said that the government must not cut aid to the world's poor people.  If only British aid went to the world’s poor people.  For example, Britain is funding a project at the University of Tilburg here at the Netherlands entitled “Innovation and Growth” which seeks to make African companies more innovative.  Some €4m ($5.2m) of British taxpayer’s money is being given to a Dutch university for a project in which there is neither British university nor institutional involvement nor indeed any direct African involvement.  Nor is this the first such Tilburg project the British have funded.  In other words, ‘ring-fencing’ is a political metaphor for waste of British money and nothing is done to stop it.

This brings me to the hard choices Britain’s armed forces will soon have to confront as a consequence of these cuts.  Britain either retains a rump conventional force that can be sent ever so slightly further than Brighton for a day or two, or invests in a dedicated nuclear deterrent that hopefully will do nothing...ever.  The British defence budget can no longer afford both.    

This political assault on the nuclear deterrent is further compounded by the way it is to be funded.  The Treasury (Finance Ministry) now insists the deterrent be funded by the defence budget whereas in the past it was paid for out of the national contingency fund.  The friction this shift generates will become all too apparent in 2015-16 when costs kick-in for the future deterrent, the successor to the UK’s Trident sea-based nuclear deterrent, which will cost an estimated £15-20bn ($23bn-$31bn) (and of course being Britain will in fact cost far higher). 

Therefore, London may have to think laterally (heaven forbid!).  That could mean one of two things.  Whilst there would be strategic and operational disadvantages the new Astute-class nuclear attack submarines could be fitted to carry supersonic nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.  The other alternative is stark; respond to Obama's Berlin speech by making virtue out of necessity and announce that Britain will set an example to the world and disarm.  That is where the logic of these cuts is leading Britain and, of course, the Liberal Eurocrats would love that. 

The 2010 Strategic Security and Defence Review (SDSR) was meant to be the definitive and defining major cut to to the British armed forces.  The simple truth is that the 2010 SDSR was an utterly un-strategic retrenchment and is still cutting a deep trench through Britain’s demoralised armed forces.  These further cuts will not only leave an already hollowed-out force hollow to its core they will have a negative impact way beyond the ‘value’ of any savings.  Critically, Britain’s already waning influence in Washington, NATO and the EU will again nose dive. 

Britain is losing the global race because the very people who talk about winning it cannot think strategically.

Julian Lindley-French