Tony Blair: Pantomime Villain

Alphen, Netherlands.  18 June. Every Yuletide when I was a kid my parents would haul me off to see a particularly perverse form of British theatre called the Christmas Pantomime.  Usual stock included Jack and the Beanstalk, Aladdin and Robin Hood, normally in cahoots with varying and often suspiciously merry clown-like henchmen.  Such ripping yarns tended to have two things in common which can explain a lot about we English. The lead ‘man; was invariably played by a woman whilst the inevitable ugly woman had to be played incontrovertibly by a man.  However, it was the pantomime villain who reigned supreme (at least until the last scene).  A character so steeped in comic evil that his (on occasions her) appearance would elicit a storm of high-pitched booing.  Watching the visceral destruction of Tony Blair this week by the British political class and Press as he tried to say something sensible about Iraq I was reminded of those long gone innocent days when anything seemed possible.  Tony Blair made some appalling mistakes but he is no pantomime villain.

Now, I must start with a disclaimer.  I was a big fan of Tony Blair and from what I understand from one piece I wrote back in 1998 for the “New Statesman”, entitled “Time to Bite the Eurobullet” he was a bit of a fan of me.  Put simply, Blair was a leader who still eclipses many of the current crop of politicians who clog the upper echelons of British politics with pretend leadership.

Now, do not get me wrong Blair made big mistakes.  First, he over-estimated and then under-estimated the impact of globalisation.  His cynical use of hyper-immigration to ram diversity down the throats of the right (in the infamous words of a Downing Street memo of the time) and assuage the left of the Labour Party was irresponsible in the extreme.  Not only did he render all immigration toxic in the minds of much of the British population the self-serving left liberal London elite which he led refused to see the damage such a large and rapid influx did to English urban society in particular. 

Blair then compounded that error by imposing ‘multiculturalism’ rather than integration on the British people.  This led to patent absurdities such as the tolerance of extremism at home which today sees so-called ‘British’ jihadists fighting with ISIS in Syria and Iraq whilst at one and the same time sending British troops to Afghanistan to keep radical Islam at ‘strategic distance’.  Indeed, tens of thousands of people from the poorest, most radical and traumatised parts of the world entered Britain under Blair even as British troops were fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban.  It was shaming that under Blair London became known as Londonistan.

Second, Blair failed to realise that Britain could never be at the ‘heart of Europe’ whilst being outside the Eurozone (and even then probably not).  The imposition on the British people of the 2007 Lisbon Treaty and the systematic misleading of the British people about just how much sovereignty he was handing to Brussels without their permission was unforgiveable.  This was compounded by Blair’s refusal to let the British people have a referendum on an issue of fundamental constitutional importance. 

Third, he should have sacked Gordon Brown in 2001 when he won a second landslide electoral victory.  The endless battles between Blair and Brown added to a sense of a country being held to ransom by Labour Party politics which emasculated effective government.  Moreover, the paralysis of government at the highest levels helped turn ‘light-touch’ banking regulation into an open invitation to criminal bankers to create the 2008 banking crisis which has damaged so many ordinary lives including my own.

And then there is interventionism.  Afghanistan and Iraq are today deemed to be disasters because of American and British intervention.  Certainly, tens if not hundreds of thousands of people have died as a consequence of those events.  However, it is utterly unfair to say that is all the fault of Tony Blair or that both countries would have fared better if no action had been taken.  No-one knows what would have happened if Saddam had stayed unchecked in Iraq or if the Taliban/Al Qaeda had consolidated their hold on Afghanistan.  Saddam clearly had ambitions to create weapons of mass destruction even if he had not attained them by 2003 when the coalition invaded.  Saddam’s Baathist regime was sustained by violence and war.  Sooner or later the Saddam regime would have either exploded or imploded under the weight of its own violent inertia. 

Al Qaeda in 2001 Afghanistan was trying to do the same as ISIS today in Iraq; create a base from which to launch global Jihad.  To suggest that ISIS is an unintended consequence of the US-led invasion of Iraq is perverse.  ISIS is a further mutation of violent Islamism that is apparent across the globe from Nigeria to Afghanistan and beyond.  Why are the French in Mali and the Central African Republic? 

Tony Blair also enjoyed noted historic successes.  It was Blair who brought peace to the streets of Belfast and across Northern Ireland.  It was Blair who used British forces to successfully stop genocide in Sierra Leone.  It was Blair who rightly moved European defence forward in 1998 with the St Malo agreement.  It was Blair who believed that Britain, Europe and the West had to engage in a dangerous world and could be a “force for good”.  It was Blair who was the passionate advocate of Responsibility to Protect and a United Nations that was more than a talking shop.  Indeed, it was precisely the belief that Saddam had ritually flouted UN-sanctioned international law that led Blair to believe intervention was necessary.

Tony Blair failed not because he was too cynical but because he was too much the idealist.  He failed at home because his attempts to prepare Britain for the twenty-first century and the concept of ‘modernisation’ he championed were far more radical than the British people realised or were prepared to accept.  However, his prescriptions were essentially correct.  Sadly, Blair’s abject failure has accelerated Britain's exaggerated decline.  He has also left Britain a broken place, possibly about to break up, bearing an unacceptable level of Brussels intrusion at an appalling price and with little sense of itself or its place in the world. 

Blair failed on the international stage because he found himself trapped between an uncompromising American president and a France and Germany which disagreed profoundly.  He had to make a choice all British prime ministers have since 1973 strenuously tried to avoid; the choice between America and Europe.

However, perhaps Blair’s true failure was to open the door to Britain’s non-leaders of today.  People who believe in nothing, believe nothing is possible and worse do not believe in Britain or its future.  Stalk the corridors of Westminster and declinist cynicism oozes from every nook and cranny. 

Tony Blair failed as a prime minister.  However, he is not the villain he is so often painted.  And, from time to time he still has something to say that is worth listening to.

Julian Lindley-French

The Hollow Men (and Women)

Eurosatory: Paris, France. 16 June.  T.S. Eliot wrote “We are the hollow men, we are the stuffed men…shape without form, shade without colour, paralysed force, gesture without motion”.  Eurosatory is the largest international military security and defence exhibition of its kind.  Hugely impressive it conveys a sense of power; it is in many ways an illusion.  My reason for coming here to Paris is as a guest of IFRI, a leading French think-tank, to speak on a pivotal question; is Europe militarily dead?  Perhaps there is an even bigger question that I should answer; is the West strategically dead?

This is a big strategic moment.  This past week Russian T-72 tanks entered Ukraine and Moscow conducted a snap exercise of forty thousand troops in Kaliningrad on the borders of Poland and Lithuania.  In Iraq the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant now threatens not just Baghdad but the entire Sykes-Picot system of states set up (for better or worse) in 1916 as they seek to create an anti-state, a Caliphate from which to launch global jihad.

Washington talks vaguely about some sort of action and has sent the aircraft-carrier USS George W. Bush into the Gulf but rules out serious military action.  Tony Blair has rightly warned Europeans to wake up but is excoriated for it.  Instead, Europeans find ever more complicated ways to ‘understand’ Russian aggression and by and large ignore what is happening across the Mediterranean as the Levant from Lebanon to the Gulf totters in the face of extremism. 

The West has become a self-indulgent strategic void led by the hollow men (and women) for whom short-termism and parochialism is the stuff of politics.  A decade or so ago the Americans believed anything was possible.  Today, strategically-inept Americans and their strategically-illiterate European allies believe nothing is possible.

Instead government has reduced foreign and security policy to pop culture. British Foreign Secretary William Hague cavorts with Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt because his advisors tell him it makes for good politics.  Sure, ending violence against women in conflict is important.  Would it not be more important to deal with the bloody conflicts in the first place?  

  

This is not just a British phenomenon.  Across the EU politicians tell me that public opinion would never accept another foreign quagmire.  The same politicians who then ignore public opinion as they appoint the elitist, federalist, faux democrat Jean-Claude Juncker as European Commission President (and they will).  Sadly, with Europe about to embark on the great struggle between democrats and federalists over the fate of the nation-state there will be little if any political energy left to engage the terrifying array of challenges amassing on Europe’s doorstep. 

Europe has been a strategic void for a long, shameful time, but worryingly Washington is also a strategic void with the Obama administration looking and sounding ever more like the EU.  President Obama came into office promising to get America out of foreign wars.  He has certainly done that but only at the cost of creating the very strategic void that the likes of Russia, Islamists and others are now exploiting.  Like Europe’s hollow leaders Obama talks the talk of power, values, interests and engagement but it is empty, meaningless and without purpose or direction…and America’s allies and adversaries know it.  The Obama administration is a study in strategic weakness.

And, as the world rearms the US will cut its defence budget over the next six years more than the entire European defence budget – a plague on both our houses.  So what, the hollow men (and women) tell me the 2020 US defence budget will still be as big as 1999.  So what, the hollow men (and women) tell me crises cannot be resolved with military power alone.  ‘Soft power’ must be applied.  The world of 2020 will be very different to the world of 1999.  As for oxymoronic ‘soft power’ it has become the hollow metaphor of hollow men (and women) for hollowed out power.

Western leaders must get a strategic grip and now.  All the ingredients exist for a very nasty world and yet Europe in particular has gone on an extended strategic vacation.  Politicians must stop putting electoral politics before sound strategy.  They must face down the growing pacifism that sees the death of even one professional soldier as a signal for withdrawal.  They must stop talking of defence merely in terms of cost rather than investment and ignore its immense value in a dangerous world.  It is the fate of those without strategy to see only cost and never value.

Action is needed now.  Something that looks like a coherent strategy is needed to re-engage jihadists and expansionists the world over. That means Western leaders re-discovering their strategic mojo.  Much has been made of the NATO Wales Summit due to take place 4-5 September and yet the draft agenda lacks both the ambition and the scope to generate the big picture politicians will need if strategy is to replace hollow rhetoric.

Sadly, the hollow men (and women) are all too predictable.  For them strategy is to be avoided at all cost because it means commitment and in Europe at least accountancy has replaced strategy.  Therefore, we the citizens will go on listening to the strategically-hollow talking big, empty platitudes about values and the ‘critical’ and ‘vital’ interests upon which freedom and stability are built as they quietly abandon the very principles upon which liberty is based. 

And we will want to believe them as the hollow men (and women) ‘lead’ us all down into the great strategic void in which they live.  The non-place in which everything is talked about but nothing is possible.  The non-place where all options are considered but none are taken.  The non-place where the long-term is ‘championed’ but only the short-term is ever discussed.  The non-place where we the people sleep the sleep of fools at peace with ourselves whilst the hollow men (and women) feed us political delusions and illusions we are only too happy to swallow ‘safe’ in our own hollowness.   

And the world will fail as the vacuum created by the West’s strategic withdrawal will unleash all hell sooner or later.  Indeed, until the West’s responsible leaders face up to this dangerous world as it is not as they would like it to be strategy will be reduced to a series of ill-connected expressions of often glossy impotence. 

There is a new geopolitics afoot that sees autocrats and extremists the world over threaten not just the West’s values but its fundamental freedoms.  And yet the hollow men (and women) dither strategically-exhausted, strategically-unsure and strategically-depressed.  So, sleep on my friends.  Slumber whilst you can because soon you will be awakened by the chirp and Twitter of the hollow men (and women) as they blame each other for having appeased reality.  Or seek the scapegoat for their inaction.  Tony Blair are you listening?

“Why did you not act” we shall cry.  “We knew what to do”, they will eventually tell us, “…but if we had done it your sleep would have been disturbed and you would not have re-elected us.  And you looked so peaceful”.  The hollow reply of the hollow men (and women) who are paid to lead but never do.

“Between the desire and the spasm, between the potency and the existence, between the essence and the descent, falls the shadow”.

Julian Lindley-French

Canada in the World?

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

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

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

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

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

  

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

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

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

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

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

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

Julian Lindley-French

A united states of Europe yes, Mr President…

Alphen, Netherlands, 8 June. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yours sincerely,

Julian Lindley-French

D-Day Today

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you, Gentlemen. 

Julian Lindley-French

Juncker: Why Cameron must stand up to Merkel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jobs for the boys?

Julian Lindley-French

The NATO Club

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Julian Lindley-French