US and China: In the Strategic Balance

Alphen, Netherlands. 2 June. The May 2015 Chinese Military Strategy highlights the greatest and fastest ever shift in the balance of military power from the liberal powers to the illiberal powers. Implicit in the strategy is a simple but clear message; now is not the right time to challenge the American presence in East Asia but given the shift taking place in the balance of power that day will come and when it comes China will act to exclude the US from China’s preferred sphere of influence.

The Strategy is clear. “On the issues concerning China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, some of its offshore neighbours take provocative actions and reinforce their military presence on China’s reefs and islands that they have illegally occupied. Some external countries are also busy meddling in South China Sea affairs; a tiny few maintain constant close-in air and sea surveillance and reconnaissance against China. It is thus a long-standing task for China to safeguard its maritime rights and interests”.

In 2014 China will (officially) spend $132bn (and probably far more).  On the face of it this figure represents a 12.2% increase on last year’s expenditure but in reality simply harmonises official and non-official defence expenditure.  It is the latest year-on-year double-digit growth in Chinese defence spending since 1989.  China’s strategic ally Russia is also engaged in a massive hike in its defence expenditure with 40% of all public investment now committed to Russia’s armed forces.  

Meanwhile, the US defence budget will fall from $500bn in 2015 to some $450bn in 2020.  The defence budgets of the European allies are still being raided to fund social security.  The mythical NATO target of 2% GDP on defence is being observed in the breach as demonstrated by British Government plans for an insane further £1bn of cuts to an already hollowed-out British military. 

Only the strategic denial and strategic illiteracy all too prevalent in European chancelleries these days can blind one to the implications of this shift – a major twenty-first century war – a Third World War - cannot be ruled out.  Read between the ‘peace’ and ‘co-operation’ lines in the Chinese strategy and the message is clear; under the rubric of “active defence” China is the coming power, and the US, Japan, South Korea and rest of the region and the world had better watch out.

The six key takeaways of the Strategy are as follows:

1.     1. The South China Sea is Chinese and China will do whatever it takes to ‘defend’ its sovereignty.  The Strategy refers to the Americans as an “external power” that meddles in “South China Sea affairs”; 

2.     2. At some point China will act to ‘resolve’ the “Taiwan issue” on Chinese terms.  “The Taiwan issue bears on China’s reunification and long-term development…reunification is an inevitable trend in the course of national rejuvenation”;

3.     3. China intends to create global-reach deployable military force.  “In response to the new requirement of safeguarding national security and development interests, China’s armed forces will work harder to create a favourable strategic posture with more emphasis on the employment of military forces and means…”

4.    4. China is preparing for an arms race with the Americans that it believes it can win over time.  The Strategy states, “In response to the new requirement arising from the worldwide RMA, the armed forces will pay close attention to the challenges in new security domains, and work hard to seize the strategic initiative in military competition”;

5.     5. The People’s Revolutionary Army and Navy is not a function of the Chinese state, but the Communist Party of China. Under Xi Jingping the Party has a) become far more strategic in its international ambitions; and b) combines a complex mix of ideology and nationalism; and

6.    6.  Future war is a distinct possibility and China intends to fight and win such a war.

The strategic balance between the US and China in Asia-Pacific is almost the mirror image of the challenge Britain faced when the Germans passed the 1898 and 1900 German Navy Laws.  On paper the British still looked vastly superior at the time.  However, Britain had a worldwide empire to protect whereas Imperial Germany could choose where and when to complicate Britain’s strategic calculus.  Britain had to respond.

Recently I chaired two American generals at a NATO meeting.  At one point I challenged them with a scenario. It is 2020 or perhaps more likely 2025. The cuts to European defence budgets have gone on apace.  The renewed cuts to the British defence budget have left the British Armed Forces emaciated, hollowed-out and dysfunctional, and the other NATO allies are little better. Suddenly a Russian-inspired crisis breaks out in the Baltic States as a snap Russian exercise starts to look like a prelude for the invasion of Estonia.  Simultaneously, China moves military forces to occupy several of its reclaimed reefs and islands whilst the People’s Liberation Navy threatens Taiwan.  The Americans find themselves in the worst of all strategic worlds, insufficiently strong in either Asia-Pacific or Europe and with allies that are more of a complication than support.

Given last month’s Chinese-Russian exercise in the Eastern Mediterranean such engineered crises-in-parallel cannot be ruled out. So, if you think I am exaggerating ask yourself this; do you think my strategic analysis wrong in fact or by assessment?  Or is it that the whole, dark big picture I paint is so dark, so Edvard Munch, you would rather not think about it?  Sadly, for most European leaders it is a crisis too far. They would prefer instead to appease a changing strategic reality than confront it.

US-China strategic relations are in the balance, but not yet on the brink. The world is a safer place when the West together is strong. It is about time our leaders remembered that.  However, a strategic clock is ticking, and it is Made in China. 

Julian Lindley-French

FIFA: Why Internationaldom is Corrupt

Geneva, Switzerland. 30 May. "For the laws of nature (as justice, equity, modesty, mercy, and in sum, doing to others as we would be done to) of themselves without the terror of some power, to cause them to be observed are contrary to our natural passions that carry us to partiality, pride, revenge and the like". "Leviathan" Thomas Hobbes.

Lac Leman is shiningly blue this morning, shimmering in the early summer sun with the reflection of light and land that is the allure of this beautiful place.  The massif of Mont Blanc is clear in the distance, recumbent like some enormous statue of Abraham Lincoln contemplating the very high, and the very low politics of life. I am back in Switzerland, the country of mountains, and Geneva, the city of peace and the seat of international organisations.  This is a home to me. Indeed, I have spent much of my life in this town over the years having worked with the UN, World Health Organisation, and for a short time with the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne.  Switzerland, more precisely Zurich, is also the lair of FIFA, denizen of the dark underworld of elite corruption of which the governing body of world football is master.  The gravy train of gravy trains that seems to run to a precise timetable of patronage, like some dark parody of the superb Swiss railway system that serves it and the rest of this meticulous country. However, FIFA is but an extreme example of an extreme system.  So, why are international organisations so prone to corruption? 

The wrong people in the wrong places: There are many very good people who work for   organisations such as FIFA, brim full of belief in 'the mission' and passionately determined to make the world a better place.  However, too often these good people are out in 'the field' doing the right thing far from the broking of power at which their dark masters excel.  Indeed, at the heights of such organisations one too often finds the politicians and self-serving elite attracted more by the prestige, the status and of course the money in which many international elites are mired than any love for any game.

The wrong people with the wrong beliefs: From my own experience I have seen how so often 'representatives' or 'delegates', or whatever they are called, are the wrong people from the wrong places with the wrong beliefs.  Often the sons and daughters of national elites (Blatter's daughter works for him), invariably the schemers (as Sepp Blatter once admitted himself to be), and inevitably the power-brokers, the strong men (normally men) who have scrambled to the top of the greasy pole and believe that private jets, police escorts, and uber-hotels are but the fruits of conquest.

A culture that promotes wrong-doing: Like all uber-elites the members thereof are very good at convincing themselves that the exchange of gifts, in its many mercurial and pecuniary forms, is not corruption at all but 'mere tokens of respect. They except such largesse not for themselves, you must understand, but on behalf of their 'people'.  It is a culture reinforced and perpetuated by an elite adept at speaking 'of the people', but from a height so far distant they might well be sitting atop Mont Blanc, or is that Mont Mammon? Olympians of deceit and self-deceit reinforced by a 'we are all in this together' culture that reinforces wrong-doing.

A system that fails the majority: Ultimately, it is the 'system' that permits the FIFAs of this world to drive the hubris-horsed, guilt-edged, cash-stuffed coach and horses through propriety.  The simple truth is that there is no real governance of such organisations and thus no real oversight or accountability.  The FIFAs exist in a form of anarchy in which the only 'law' is that of the elite jungle - take what you can, while you can, when you can...in the name of the game/people (delete as appropriate). 

The FIFAs of this world have become Saville Row suited 'playerds' adept at dribbling around propriety into the open but hidden goal of personal greed.  Audit commissions are set up that do not audit. Ethics committees are set up that are unethical.  'Transparency' is talked of but hidden behind a raft of lawyer-led secrecy, often in the name of 'protecting' commercial and organisational 'rights', when in fact it is merely to keep we the paying peasantry at far distance from the gilded elite and their gilded lifestyles.

Masked in the language of selflessness FIFA this week was super-selfishness at its very worst.  Americans (well done Yanks!) and the Swiss tried this week to provide at least some form of 'good governance' by indicting several of Blatter's lieutenants.  And yet, Blatter, as yet unindicted, was re-elected as FIFA President just two days later demonstrating yet again just how embedded self-interest is at the heart of elite internationaldom. 

Why does such vice continue?  Why is the cash of millions of taxpayers, supporters, customers siphoned off by such a self-serving few?  The reaction of Russia's President Putin was indicative (but by no means exclusive). The US indictments, he said, were sour grapes for losing the 2022 World Cup bid, yet another example of an America that wants to rule the world. THAT, is the real reason that the corrupt elites of internationaldom are able to impose such a burden of false entitlement, such a heavy tax of hubris, on the rest of us.  The states and the respective institutions in those states responsible for imposing some level off propriety on the elite are more concerned with fighting each other than ensuring proper behaviour.  Oversight and accountability exists there none.

There are many Blatters at rarified levels of internationaldom, consummate in the dark arts of survival politics, never 'responsible' for the corruption rampant around them, but at the very least utterly complicit by association and maintained in power by an ironclad system of patronage and partiality.  And, there will always be Blatters as long as there is no power, no Leviathan, to impose order above the state of nature in which the Blatters and their cohorts prosper.

The very first football club in the world Sheffield F.C. was formed in my home town in England in 1857.  It was a noble idea that led in time to what became called 'the beautiful game'. It is a game that no longer has anything to do with FIFA.  FIFA instead has mastered the oldest and ugliest game of all - vice, hubris and deceit.  It is time for Europeans and North Americans and all men and women of goodwill to play a different game and simply walk away from FIFA.

Julian Lindley-French

Brexit Watch: Resistance is Futile

Alphen, Netherlands. 27 May. This week the slavishly pro-EU newspaper The Guardian ran the headline, “Germany (and France) tighten their grip on Europe”.  The trekkies amongst you will recall Star Trek: the Next Generation back in the 1990s.  It was a very ‘European’ Star Trek in which a very English (Yorkshire actually) captain of the Starship Enterprise pretended to be French but was in fact far more Nelson than Bonaparte.  And, the really, really, really bad villains – the Borg – were quite clearly Swedish.  Imagine a spaceship full of alien Carl Bildts and you get the basic idea. The Borg were implacable – Jean-Luc Picard could not talk to them, reason with them, or debate with them.  All the Borg would do was to repeat the mantra, “resistance is futile’.  David Cameron must be feeling like that this morning and it is only Week One of his efforts to repatriate some very modest powers from Brussels to Britain.

Cameron has at least achieved one thing; he has flushed the Germans (and French) out into the political open.  It is now clear for all to see that the EU is not a political union at all.  It is a good old-fashioned empire with Germany (and France) at its core.  This was revealed by the deliciously-timed leak of secret German (and French) proposals to deepen Eurozone integration that had been agreed at a secret meeting in the margins of last week’s Riga Summit.  The leak was timed to coincide with Cameron’s meeting with Jean-Claude Juncker and thus to cause ‘Dave’ maximum embarrassment.  .

For months now I have been told by senior German and French politicians and officials that the seriously modest (some would say cosmetic) changes Cameron seeks would require a treaty change and for that reason such changes are impossible.  Britain, I was told, must take the EU as it is or leave it. Now Germany (and France) seeks to move far and fast towards deeper political and economic union and somehow such a move will not require treaty change.  What complete and utter hypocrisy.

The irony is that Germany (and France) is right. Back in 2010 at the height of the crisis I published a much-lambasted piece entitled “Britain must now leave the EU”.  My logic was irresistible.  If the Eurozone was to be saved much deeper political and economic integration would be required through the establishment of pan-EU institutions that in effect replaced national decision-making with some form of federal structure.  Indeed, that was precisely the intent of Jacques Delors when he helped dream up the Single Currency. When it comes to ‘ever closer union’ there is no such thing as a ‘bad’ crisis in the EU.  Britain, my logic ran, would never join the Euro and therefore would become a second class passenger on the EU train paying a first class fare.  Worse, Germany (and France) would never let Britain anywhere near the locomotive which they had firmly under their control. Therefore, for the sake of the Eurozone AND for Britain the British should leave….amicably.

It may be that the secret accord agreed in the margins between Germany (and France) is but the opening shot in the Brexit negotiation.  Behind the hubris the issues implicit in the Brexit debate are fundamental.  The British are questioning the very idea of ‘ever closer union’ sanctified at the heart of every European treaty since 1957.  They are challenging the very idea of European elitism and challenging the idea that the best form of governance is at the highest and thus most distant level of power. Above all, the British are doing what they have done for centuries; challenging hegemony in Europe.  The language may be different and indeed the institutional setting but implicit in the Brexit is the same impulse as drove the British to oppose Phillip II of Spain, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm and indeed Hitler. For the record I am NOT equating modern Germany with either the Kaiser or the Nazis but history is always eloquent in Europe.

If Berlin (and Paris) drive fair thinking Brits away by insisting upon deeper political integration at the EXPENSE of the world’s fifth largest economy, Europe’s second largest economy, and for all the defence-incompetence of the current government, Europe’s most powerful military actor (outside of Russia) then Britain WILL leave the EU.  And, no amount of bullying by multinational corporations will stop it.

Rather, a proper, adult negotiation must start that deliberately distinguishes itself from history.  Jean Claude Juncker has said he wants a “fair deal” for Britain.  That could work one of two ways.  If the EU is indeed an empire in all but name Germany and France could take the bold step of simply inviting Britain into its command club.  If, on the other hand, Berlin and Paris really are prepared to surrender deep sovereignty to create a real European Union then a new form or Single Market membership should be created.

“Resistance is futile” is not the message to send to the British right now.  However, the simple truth is that the EU has reached a crossroads, a bifurcation, a junction that can no longer be avoided. Equally, the British people should be under no illusion; even this modest attempt to repatriate powers represents a fundamental challenge to Europe’s power order.  My only hope is David Cameron, a man who routinely and deliberately confuses politics with strategy, also understands the strategic importance of the moment and indeed its significance.

Let’s talk.

Julian Lindley-French

George Osborne: Vladmir Putin’s Most Dangerous Ally

Alphen, Netherlands. 23 May. British Finance Minister George Osborne is Vladimir Putin’s most dangerous ally.  This week it was announced that Osborne is seeking ever deeper cuts to the British Armed Forces, as I warned in my latest book Little Britain: Twenty-First Century Strategy for a Middling European Power (www.amazon.co.uk). If the threat is carried out, and I have every reason to believe it will be, such egregious cuts to an already hollowed-out force will be the greatest act of strategic vandalism to Britain’s influence since the 1930s.  It is a decision that not only Britain will come to regret but also the US and all of Britain’s NATO allies. As for the Special Relationship with the US – it is over.  It is completely the wrong strategic message to send at completely the wrong time and demonstrates yet again the strategic illiteracy of both Cameron and Osborne. Russia’s President Putin must be laughing all the way to the Baltic States, or wherever it is next he is going to de-stabilise. 

The sad story of the Cameron Government(s) and its stewardship of British national strategy, and Britain’s defences since 2010 has been one of dissembling, deceit and outright lies.  In 2010 then Foreign Secretary William Hague said that there would be no strategic shrinkage under the Tories. Britain has been strategically-shrinking ever since.  Pledge abandoned. Strategic Defence and Security Review 2010 was presented as the big financial hit Britain’s armed forces would have to take to right the economy.  After 2015 the British defence budget, we were told, would see a real term 1% increase.   Pledge abandoned.  In September 2014 David Cameron badgered other NATO leaders for not committing to spending 2% GDP on defence.  British defence spending is about to fall in the next year from 2.07% to 1.88% GDP and fall again thereafter.  Pledge abandoned.  Cameron promised that the current size of the Army would be maintained at an already small 82,500 as part of Future Force 2020. Active consideration is now being given to an Army of 60,000.  Pledge about to be abandoned.  Worse, Cabinet Office Minister Oliver Letwin has been charged with the task of trying to make the defence budget APPEAR as though it meets the NATO 2% GDP guideline.  Pledge about to be manipulated. 

The strategic-illiteracy of both Cameron and Osborne was brought home to me in a 22 April mail I received from an official in the Office of the Conservative Party Chairman which frankly insulted my intelligence.  The email boldly stated, “I can assure you that the Conservative Party is committed to supporting our Armed Forces and maintaining Britain’s position in the world”. Nonsense!  The email then reminded me that, “…no country in the world can invest in, maintain and support their Armed Forces while having a broken economy…” Yes, but Britain resides on this planet not on Mars, is meant to be a leading power, and bad people are doing bad things.

The missive then went on to offer a rosy future.  The “…Government plans to spend £163 billion on new equipment over the coming decade”, and the “…Government is committed to spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence…”  And then the sucker punch; “…with decisions on spending after the financial year 2015/16 to be determined in the next spending review”. In other words, ‘we told you more cuts were coming. Really we did’. However, the email left the best to last. “I would like to assure you that the UK remains a truly global military power…” What complete and utter tosh!  

However, the real ‘cruncher’ came in a small sub-phrase towards the end of the email when it suggested that all the planned investment, “…will keep Britain safe”.  It is a phrase Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, the safe-pair-of-hands defence minister charged by Cameron and Osborne with destroying, sorry cutting Britain’s armed forces.  First, it is not true.  Britain recently had to rely on allies to find two new Russian nuclear attack submarines seeking to enter Britain’s territorial waters.  Second, the true test of Britain’s defence is not the immediate defence of the island, but the fulfilment of its commitments to NATO allies, most notably the strategic reassurance, forward deterrence and collective defence of the three Baltic States. 

Indeed, although Britain is offering to act as a key element of NATO’s new Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF) the coming cuts will emaciate the very forces designed to undertake such as role.  No wonder US forces call the Brits “the borrowers’. 

Let me be clear; implicit in the new round of planned defence cuts is a form of isolationism that passes for foreign and security policy under this Government and the final and irrevocable British retreat from strategic influence – Little Britain indeed.

Sadly, London is now committed to another Strategic Pretence and Insecurity Review and the appeasement of a rapidly-deteriorating strategic reality at a moment when illiberal power is gaining the upper hand.  Therefore, Osborne and Cameron’s strategic illiteracy is quite simply a recipe for disaster as they seek to abandon security to fund ‘prosperity’.  In the real world the one cannot exist without the other.

On my extensive travels of late Britain’s loss of influence in key chancelleries has become all too apparent to me.  Much of that is due to the butchering of Britain’s world-renowned armed forces which have long provided the hard power foundations for London’s soft power influence.

 

Frankly, I no longer believe any ‘commitment’ Cameron makes is worth any more than yesterday’s newsprint – be it on Europe, the economy or defence.

George Osborne – Vladimir Putin’s most dangerous ally.

Julian Lindley-French 

Riga’s Three Big Strategic Questions

Alphen, Netherlands. 22 May. In January 1941 at a desperate moment in World War Two President Roosevelt sent a handwritten note to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in which he quoted Longfellow. “Sail on, oh Ship of State, Sail on, oh union strong and great, Humanity with all its fears, With all the hope of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate”.  Roosevelt at the time was encouraging Britain to fight on alone against Nazi tyranny. As EU leaders today sit down in Latvia’s beautiful capital Riga they might muse on Longfellow’s poem. Indeed, although the centre-piece of today’s EU summit is the Eastern Partnership and the Union’s relationship with six well post-Soviet states at heart the discussion is really about three fundamental and interlocking strategic questions that will shape the future of Europe and the EU; the Russia Question, the British Question, and the Greek Question.  Implicit in all three questions is the biggest question of all; can the EU find a new balance between power, security, legitimacy and freedom.  

The Russia Question: Implicit in the EU’s struggle with Russia (for that is what it is) is a fundamental clash of ideas about international relations.  It is a clash that places all three Baltic States – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – on the front-line of freedom.  It is also a clash between free sovereign choice essential to any community of nations and the imposition of influence implicit in the renewed sphere of influence Russia seeks. 

The British Question(s): There are in fact two questions implicit in the Brexit debate and they concern the EU’s relationship with power and people (it was ever thus).  Answering the power question is fairly straightforward.  If, for example, Germany and France want Britain to stay in the EU, then Berlin and Paris must finally afford London equal status within the Union.  In other words, non-Eurozone states (especially the most powerful non-Eurozone state) must no longer be treated as second-class EU citizens.  The people question is more complex.  The Brexit debate reflects two very different political cultures; Continental statism and protectionism versus Anglo-Saxon localism and openness.  Let me state for the record that I recognise the great work the EU does on my behalf. However, as a Lincoln democrat (note the small ‘d’) I believe firmly that power in a democracy should remain as close to the people as possible. Thus, I have long been concerned about the EU’s appalling and too oft glossed over democratic deficit and the growing distance between the EU institutions and me the people.  Britain’s fight is thus every thinking European’s fight against the over-concentration of unaccountable power in a few Euro-elite hands. 

The Greek Question:  The Greek question raises perhaps the biggest question of all; just how responsible are Europeans as Europeans responsible for each other’s debts, burdens, crises, and indeed security? Therefore, the Greek question is at one and the same time distinct and connected to the Russia and British questions. In effect Athens is challenging Germany (in particular) to answer a question Berlin has long-been dodging; what price leadership?  And, does German leadership of the Eurozone matter more to Berlin than a Grexit, which would mark a failure of German leadership?  Given the creative accounting the EU has used to give the impression Athens has met its debt-repayment schedule it is an argument that Syriza may actually be winning.  

If the EU is to find a new balance power, security, legitimacy and freedom implicit in Riga’s three big strategic questions many of the assumptions that have underpinned ‘Europe’ since at least the 1957 Treaty of Rome will need to be re-thought.  Clearly, a new balance needs to be found between the ‘ever closer union’ mantra of Brussels and the growing demand for political localism evident across much of Europe.  A new political balance would need to offer far more than the stale and much-abused idea of ‘subsidiarity’.   Equally, localism poses another vital question; can Europeans influence their world in the absence of political union? It is a moot point given the EU itself has no strategic culture worthy of the name and yet has successfully contributed to the strategic neutering of states like Britain and France.

Then there is the big legitimacy question. Can the European citizen ever be free if power is removed from democratically-elected national and regional legislatures and invested (often without the express permission of the citizen) in a distant, power-acquisitive political bureaucracy such as the European Commission?  Finally, both implicit and explicit in the challenge posed by Russia to the east and ISIS to the south is a further question. Can Europe resist aggression and subversion if it remains so split and disaggregated?

Therefore, today’s debate in Riga is really about the biggest question of all; whither Europe in the twenty-first century?  Humanity with all its fears, is indeed, hanging breathless on thy fate.  

Julian Lindley-French

NATO and New Ways of Warfare: Defeating Hybrid Threats

NATO and New Ways of Warfare: Defeating Hybrid Threats

 “True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous and conflicting information”.

Winston Spencer Churchill

Alphen, Netherlands. 19 May.  This blog is devoted to my report on a major NATO conference entitled “NATO and New Ways of Warfare: Defeating Hybrid Threats,” for which I acted as Rapporteur and which was held between 29-30 April at the NATO Defense College in Rome. Below are the core messages and policy recommendations from the report.  A full text of my report can be found at http://www.ndc.nato.int/news/current_news.php?icode=814. My sincere thanks to Major-General Bojarski, Commandant, NATO Defense College, Dr Daria Daniels-Skodnik, Dean and Dr Jeff Larsen, Director of the Research Divsion and his team for their help and support in the preparation of this report.

Core Messages

“NATO and the New Ways of Warfare; Defeating Hybrid Warfare” explored four main themes: NATO’s changing strategic environment, the scope and nature of hybrid threats; NATO’s pol-mil responses to hybrid warfare; and NATO’s military response to hybrid warfare. Hybrid warfare was defined as the denial of and defection from standard norms and principles of international relations in pursuit of narrow interests.  Contemporary hybrid warfare is strategic in its ambition and employs a mix of disinformation, destabilising gambits and intimidation to force an adversary to comply with those interests.  The essential purpose of hybrid warfare is to keep an adversary politically, militarily and societally off-balance.

Whilst much of the debate concerned the military aspects of hybrid warfare the need for a tight pol-mil relationship was seen as the essential pre-requisite for effective Allied engagement of the threats posed.  Indeed, a fundamental issue at debate concerned how to create devolved political command authority in the early phase of a crisis to ensure that military high readiness is matched by the exercise of political agility in response to hybrid threats. Critically, whilst the debate centred on the threats posed by Russia to NATO Strategic Direction East, and by ISIS to NATO Strategic Direction South, such threats and risks were seen as reflective of a more conflictual world in which power is shifting at pace away from the Western liberal states.  

Hybrid warfare exploits political seams within the Alliance and societal seams within open societies.  Therefore, if NATO is to successfully adapt and adjust strategy, capability and resiliency it is vital that such threats are defined and properly understood and thereafter early indicators established as effective conventional and nuclear deterrence remains the first order principle of Alliance action and high readiness (and high responsiveness).  

However, in the event deterrence fails NATO must have the capacity and capability to fight war.  That in turn entails the strengthening of societal cohesion within NATO nations, the forging of close links between the civilian and military aspects of security and defence. The future NATO must be built on good intelligence, knowledge, robust command and control, rapid response allied to the capacity to “surge to mass” via a “big, agile reserve”.

Policy Recommendations:

NATO’s policy response to strategic hybrid warfare will in effect require reflection on and adaptation of the 2010 NATO Strategic Concept in light of the lessons of hybrid warfare.  Effective strategic communications (Stratcom) will be vital both for home audiences and the strategic key leader engagement implicit in strategic hybrid warfare. Such an adaptation and the strategic realignment of the Alliance would in effect reflect a mid-term (five year) policy review of the Strategic Concept for accuracy, credibility and contemporary relevance given the challenges posed by hybrid warfare.  Such realignment would need to incorporate the following elements:

Prevention

Better understand strategic hybrid threats: NATO must establish a proper distinction between and granulated understanding of the threats posed to the Alliance from Strategic Direction East and Strategic Direction South.  

Craft a hybrid warfare strategy: As part of NATO’s strategic realignment a NATO hybrid warfare strategy should then be considered and prepared by the Military Committee. 

Establish adapted early indicators: Adapted early indicators must be established to enable more agile response to hybrid threats, especially in the early phase of the conflict cycle.  This will require a new relationship between closed and open source information and better exploitation of the Alliance of knowledge communities.

Establish a Stratcom policy: Effective strategic communications is part of Alliance defence against hybrid warfare and effective messaging is central to strategic communications. A NATO Stratcom policy should be crafted to counter the narrative at the heart of an adversary’s conduct of hybrid warfare.  Particular emphasis should be placed on NATO-EU synergy and tight joint messaging thereafter.

Adaptation

Reconsider information management: To defeat hybrid warfare NATO must beat the adversary to the message. That will require reconsideration of the use of classified information, a move to ensure the early release of mission critical information, and the relationship between classified and unclassified information.

Adapt nuclear posture: NATO’s nuclear deterrence posture, readiness and messaging also needs to be re-considered in response to Moscow’s heightened use of nuclear weapons as part of hybrid warfare.  The Alliance message must be clear: Moscow must be under no illusion. The Alliance still understands the role of nuclear weapons in deterrence and Russia will never achieve escalation dominance. Deterrence will thus be enhanced by a heightened role for the Nuclear Planning Group (NPG) and a demonstration that since the end of the Cold War NATO has lost neither the knowledge nor understanding of the role of nuclear weapons in deterrence.

Close the conventional/nuclear seam: NATO’s military preparedness and readiness will also need to include exercising and training for the transition from conventional operations to nuclear operations. Specifically, NATO must respond to Russia’s stated military doctrine that seeks to use nuclear weapons to “de-escalate crises” in Moscow’s favour.

Adapt exercising and training: Allied Command Transformation (ACT) must be given a clear tasking to develop exercise and training programmes to reflect recent developments in and reactions to hybrid warfare.  Specifically, NATO needs to make far better use of lessons identified and lessons learned from recent campaigns and incorporate them in a ‘scientific’ development programme in which the future force (and forces) are built via a series of linked exercises and defence education initiatives that test the unknown rather than confirm the already known.  The two joint force commands and the high readiness force headquarters would have a key role to play in the development of such a programme.

Re-consider the role of Partners: A specific study is needed on the role of Partners in a NATO hybrid warfare strategy.  Such a study would re-consider partnership mechanisms in light of hybrid warfare, such as the Mediterranean Dialogue, Istanbul Co-operation Initiative, Partners across the Globe and Partnership for Peace.

Enhance Resiliency: A NATO hybrid warfare strategy would need to properly consider how best to enhance resiliency of Allies and Partners. A particular focus would be needed on the protection of critical national information and infrastructures and consequence management.  A useful first-step could be an analysis of key vulnerabilities to better understand how individual NATO nations could be undermined by hybrid warfare.  Such an analysis would include a better understanding of how minorities are susceptible to manipulation; the vulnerability of the media space to external saturation; how the lack of a binding national narrative could be exploited; and how electorates could be alienated from leadership during a hybrid warfare-inspired crisis, particularly through elite corruption.

Engagement

Enhance military responsiveness and agility: Hybrid warfare seeks to exploit the seams between collective defence, crisis management and co-operative security. Therefore, twenty-first century Alliance collective defence will also require a mix of coalitions and Alliance-wide action.  The capacity for the rapid force generation of coalitions of allies and partners, supported by effective command and control at short notice will be central to NATO’s military responsiveness and agility.

Establish credible forward deterrence: In countering hybrid warfare forward deterrence is as important as forward defence.  Indeed, NATO must not be forced to trade space for time in the event of a full-scale war of which hybrid warfare is but a prelude.  Critically, the Alliance needs to consider how best to force an adversary and its forces off-balance, both politically and militarily.  Critically, NATO forces must be aim to force an adversary onto the defensive via a counter hybrid warfare strategy that imposes the unexpected on decision-makers.  Such a posture will require demonstrable reassurance and readiness.

Reconceive NATO forces: In support of forward deterrence combined and ‘deep joint’ Alliance forces must be able to operate effectively in and across the seven domains of strategic hybrid warfare – air, sea, land, space, cyber, information and knowledge.  Critically, the military relationship between NATO’s first responder forces and heavier, follow-on forces many of which may be deployed outside of Europe will need to be worked up.

Implement Wales in full: The September 2014 NATO Wales Summit was a benchmark summit; much like London in 1991 and Washington in 1999 and must be implemented in full.  Therefore, NATO political guidance must establish credible capability requirements for twenty-first collective defence that generates a new kind of ‘defence’ through a mix of advanced deployable forces, cyber-defence and missile defence.  Strategic hybrid warfare is not simply an alternative form of warfare; it is the new way of warfare.

Julian Lindley-French

The Middle East needs Grand Strategy

Alphen, Netherlands. 18 May.  This weekend chickens began coming home to roost.  A Libyan ‘minister’ warned that not only was ISIS using the Mediterranean migrant crisis to smuggle its fighters into Europe, the militants were profiting from the trade.  And, the EU moved to establish a mission that would interdict the traffickers close to the Libyan coast and perhaps within Libya.  Today, news comes that the Iraqi city of Ramadi has fallen to ISIS.  The Middle East is as unstable and dangerous as at any time since the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.  Worse, the threat such instability poses to the region and beyond is growing, symptomatic and axiomatic of a new systemic struggle.  As such the defeat of ISIS will require far more than its military eclipse. 

Now, few who know me would call me naïve and yet I know what I am about to venture will seem precisely that.  For all the excellent work being done to counter ISIS I am struck by the absence of a political strategy for the Middle East. ISIS is as much a symptom of several interlocking conflicts that are feeding off each other as the cause and will only been seen off in time by a new settlement in the Middle East that will itself demand the kind of political ambition and vision that none of the key leaders seem to have, be they in the region or without.  Nothing less than the re-establishment of strong, legitimate states across the region will suffice; states that able and willing to meet the needs of a burgeoning but deeply divided people.  

Something more clearly must be done.  The first phase of the mission of the sixty-nation “Global Coalition to Counter ISIL” to “blunt ISIL’s strategic, tactical and operational momentum in Iraq” has met with some limited success.  However, there appears little or no consideration concerning the political objective vital to the achievement of a more stable Middle East.  Worse, Saudi-led Gulf Co-operation Council air-strikes in Yemen are indicative of an emerging regional-systemic struggle in which the fundamentalist threat posed by ISIS is merging with the struggle for regional supremacy between Iran and a host of other actors. 

There is a very real danger that the current struggle between Middle Eastern (and increasingly European) states and anti-state elements could be but the curtain-raiser to a wider Middle East war between states, fuelled and intensified by mistrust between elites and peoples, the mutual hatred of Shia and Sunni factions, Iran and many Arab states and possibly between Israel and an Iran-inspired, proxy-led coalition. Such a war would have profound consequence for the region and the world.  For example, Europe is particularly vulnerable to loss of energy supplies from the region and to the further de-stabilisation of its societies by AQ/ISIS-inspired Islamic fundamentalism. Moreover, key Western allies such as Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon are facing profound risks from the current instability that show no signs of abating.

An important first step is to understand the cause of the current conflicts. Arab elites talk much nonsense about the brief colonial period as a way to avoid the consequences of their misgovernment.  However, Europeans must bear some responsibility. With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in May 1916 the Anglo-French Sykes-Picod agreement was struck.  Under the terms of this agreement the Middle East was carved up to serve British and French interests via a series of ‘protectorates’ none of which was strong enough to dominate the region, but all of which inherited ancient disputes and grievances.  During the period of de-colonisation in the 1950s and early 1960s it appeared that Arab nationalism would become the expression of an emerging ‘Arab nation’.  However, defeats by Israel in 1967 and 1973 and the perception on the Arab Street that Arab governments were in the pocket of a West was inimical to Arab interests enabled the steady rise of Islamic fundamentalism and the creed of the Caliphate as an alternative to the ‘failed’ state.  The rise of fundamentalism was further enabled by the kingdom of Saudi Arabia which sought to buy AQ elements off by funding Salafi jihadism both in the region and beyond. The collapse of Syria and the Shia-Sunni divide in Iraq created the conditions for Islamic fundamentalism to mutate into ISIS which now poses a threat to all the states in the region and many beyond.

Achieving a new political settlement will require Herculean leadership and strategic patience, neither of which the West and its leaders possess in abundance.  Morevore, there would be many barriers in the way of any such strategy towards such an end: There is no grand strategic political vision for the region; little or no strategic unity of effort and purpose between the US and its European allies; little or no political ownership of any such strategy at the highest levels in the region, the White House and/or European chancelleries; and whilst there is some focus on the ‘tactical’ challenges posed by ISIS (such as trafficking), there is little or no political desire to consider the bigger strategic picture.  Worse, behind the headlines there is a profound lack of willingness by leaders on both sides of the Atlantic to properly engage political capital, strategy thinking and/or invest in a stable Middle East. 

Therefore, what ‘strategy’ exists is essentially a ‘containment’ strategy.  Indeed, in spite of air strikes ISIS is being made to appear stronger than it is and thus able to exploit divisions by choosing when, where and how to act.  Sadly, it is inadequate ‘strategy’ made worse by elite European ‘political correctness’ concerning the defence of Europe’s legitimate interests in the region.  The situation is further complicated by the new geopolitics and the growing tensions between China, Russia and the West preventing the drafting of political strategy in the UN Security Council.

However, for all the above the status quo is not an option. Therefore, the West must act.  If not the current struggle will see one or a combination of the following outcomes: some form of Caliphate in parts of the region which will lead to a protracted struggle (possible and extremely dangerous); some form of hybrid Caliphate and/or hybrid states all of which embrace Islamic fundamentalism (extremely dangerous); states propped up by the West (Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, PA) the elites of which are despised by their populations subject to AQ, ISILSpropaganda and a range of Iranian-inspired proxies (very plausible, simply postpones collapse of state structure); and/or a general Middle Eastern war which pits Iran against the Gulf States, but which also includes Israel in de facto support of the Gulf States (increasingly likely and very dangerous).

The strategic aim must be re-furbish the state in the Middle East, with the focus some form of political stability in the Levant.  Thankfully, most people do not want to live under a Caliphate and loyalty to the state (if not elites) remains strong.

Therefore, the Global Coalition needs a new political mandate that would see the following:  re-doubled efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian struggle via some form of two-state solution (yes, I know); Iran locked out of much of the Middle East through the blunting of its proxies and a carrot-and-stick approach to dealing with Tehran that combines containment and encouragement (the Nuclear Framework Agreement is a first step);  the reinforcement of friendly Middle Eastern states with aid and development and support for security sector reform (Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, PA) and with political support (Gulf States) as a bulwark against a general collapse; the discreet promotion of political reforms; support for the Arab League to create/install a new regime in Damascus; and enhanced support for an enhanced Arab League to defeat of ISIS.  The proposed Rapid Reaction Force is a good first step but an overt and early victory is needed.

As I said at the top of this blog many of my proposals will seem utterly naïve to seasoned Middle East watchers.  However, it is precisely the ambition implicit in such a strategy that will be needed if the Middle East and much of North Africa is not pose a growing threat to itself and all of us.  Efforts thus far have simply not been up to the strategic challenge.  Critically, the scenarios and the challenges outlined above capture both the scope and the nature of the current struggle and if not properly gripped and quickly will lead inevitably to a general Middle Eastern war.  The most that can be hoped for from current ‘political’ strategy is a Middle East that remains inherently instable.  Given the proliferation of dangerous technologies the prospect that such a struggle will be increasingly shaped by enemies – state and non-state – means the current policy of containment will in time be doomed to fail.  

The bottom-line is this; all of the conflicts in the Middle East and their consequences are joined up. it is about time that the response of the 'international community' (however so defined) is also better joined up. 

Machiavelli once said: “All courses of action are risky.  So prudence is not in avoiding danger (it is impossible) but calculating risk and acting decisively.  Make mistakes of ambition, not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do things, not the strength to suffer”.

Julian Lindley-French