Can the British Army be Saved?

“British defence policy is incoherent and purposeless”.

This is the note of a debate held on March 21st by senior figures in The Alphen Group which I have the honour to chair. 

The debate considered the future British Army to which London should aspire and the consequences for European defence and NATO of the current state of the British Army.  Size matters with credible and relevant fighting power and readiness the real measures of strength.  Ukraine has 100 manoeuvre brigades and is only just holding a defensive line.  Britain can deploy at best only several such brigades.

Britain must have an expeditionary army that can enter the Continent in some strength together with sufficient and robust logistics. In the face of a Russia committed to aggression and given NATO’s “increased defensive frontage”, the British Army should be able to field at least one full corps headquarters and two heavy divisions, one at 30 days readiness and the other at 90 days, in addition to Special Forces and other highly mobile strike forces together with their deployed defence and enablers.  That is not the case today. The Army must also be big enough to afford Britain a “seat at the table” in Washington and the institutions vital to London’s defence strategy.  

London has no clear focus on how to defend the realm leaving British defence policy incoherent and purposeless, with little relation between defence strategic ends, ways and means.  There are other consequent critical lacunae, such as the lack of reserves all of which since 2010 have been committed to cover personnel shortfalls, and no industrial and technological base to support the armed forces in general. Worse, there is no real framework for properly understanding the place and role of the Army in the defence of an island that cannot feed or eat itself should trade be disrupted or play an appropriate role in NATO land deterrence and defence.

The wider defence strategic reality is that on current level of expenditure Britain can no longer afford both a bespoke continually at sea nuclear deterrent and credibly and appropriately powerful conventional armed forces that meet its NATO commitments. This is partly due to defence cost inflation, and poor returns on defence investment due to “gold-plated procurement”. Britain also has wider defence-strategic commitments, such as the AUKUS pact which do offer benefits such as enhanced influence with critical partners, but they also cost money reducing further the investment the Army needs to realise minimum force goals.  

Until London’s Body Politic is once again aligned with Britain’s minimum grand strategic interests the ends, ways and means of British military power “will continue to be out of sync”. For too long the British Army, Royal Navy and RAF have been seen as a cost that can only be afforded if Britain is prosperous enough, rather than a critical value that must be afforded. These tensions have been compounded by senior military commanders faced with such tensions who bet that technology could offset mass whilst also trying to meet an expanded task-list with an ever-smaller force.  This has placed pressures on experienced personnel who are leaving the Army in significant numbers. Many allies value the quality of British officers but if the Army continues to erode that quality will erode with it.

What to do?  With a new Labour government likely to come to power in 2024 a further defence review together with a comprehensive spending review will be held.  Any such review would have to mark a departure from recent such exercises and begin with an honest analysis of likely global and European security challenges over the next 10 years, central to which would be identification of the fighting power needed to confront Russia.  Only then can Britain then deduce the minimum capabilities needed in both the nuclear and conventional domains to dissuade them, with or without American support. 

The crisis in the fighting power of the British Army is a crisis in British defence and the vital need for wholesale reform designed to drive jointness deep across all the armed forces and their civilian masters.  It must start at the top with the wholesale reform of the National Security Council but above all the Ministry of Defence.  Above all, London must stop lying to itself about the state of the British Army because only then will NATO allies believe that Britain can deliver the fighting power which is central to the NATO Defence Planning Process and land centric deterrence.

Can the British Army be saved? To some extent that is a truculent question. Perhaps the real question is can the British Army be saved from London.  I must be and quickly and all of us, Britons and allies alike, must win this vital political battle. 

Julian Lindley-French

Masters of Hot Air?

February 28th, 2024  My favourite TV series is the brilliant Hanks/Spielberg 2001 "Band of Brothers".  It tells the story of Easy Company of the magnificent US Army 101st Airborne Division.  It is a very human story of ordinary Americans doing extraordinary things in war to defeat Nazism and liberate Western Europe between 1943 and 1944.  We Brits do not figure much in it, but then it is a story of brave, young Americans and fair enough.  Still, Tom Hanks does appear briefly as a British paratrooper. You can then imagine my disappointment watching the new Hanks/Spielberg "Masters of the Air".  It is still a story of brave, young and terrified Americans (even though many of the actors are strangely British) carrying out their duty in B-17 Flying Fortresses or Forts as they were known by their crews, and paying for it with their lives and liberty.  

Unlike "Band of Brothers" the new series is brash and too often inaccurate and treats their RAF allies with contempt.  They present the RAF as a bunch of arrogant aristocratic 'toffs'.  There were a few such in Bomber Command's aircrew, but the massive majority were ordinary Aussies, Brits, Canucks, Czechs, Kiwis, Poles and from a host of other nationalities and from a host of ordinary backgrounds. They were also all volunteers and they all paid a terrible price either with their lives or with their minds or both.  Many felt conflicted about the area bombing of German cities and people but this was Total War. If you asked my grandmother who was bombed out by the Nazis in Plymouth and Sheffield what see thought about the RAF striking back she would have echoed the words of Air Marshal Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris:  "The Germans have sowed the wind, they will now reap the whirlwind".  

What saddens me about the latest Hanks/Spielberg World War Two epic is what it says about contemporary, angry America. An America that needs to tell itself that it is alone and that all of its friends and allies are useless and untrustworthy.  That is simply not the case.  The experience of my family in World War Two and my many American, German and other friends, is why I am a committed Atlanticist, why I am a committed European, why I am honoured to call Luftwaffe officers my friends, and why I will always defend freedom from those who threaten it -physically if called upon. 

So, as an antidote to "Masters of the Air" let me share with you another movie, "Lancaster".  It captures in thirteen minutes what  my forebear in the RAF went through and what "Masters" fails to capture in several hours Enjoy, as my American friends would say. 

https://youtu.be/sSXiny5mEpg 

Just for the record, the USAAF 8th Air Force lost 26,000 aircrew during the campaign, whilst RAF Bomber Command and the Royal Canadian Air Force lost 55,000 of 126,000 aircrew.  Whose counting?  I am, because I honour every single bloody one of them American, British and the rest. 

Julian Lindley-French

No Way Norway!

 

“Castles in the air – they are so easy to take refuge in. And so easy to build”.

Henrik Ibsen

February 10^th, 2024. Just back from the Norwegian Atlantic Committee’s superb annual Leangkollen Conference. The conference was great, the debate less so with a lack of urgency, realism, solidarity, but above all self-deceit permeated the debate.

First, it is ridiculous, almost morally repugnant, that Norway with its enormous sovereign wealth fund does not spend 2% GDP on defence.  At the conference Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store made all the right noises but…  One only must watch Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson and the lecture he gave the world on fantasy Russian history to understand NATO must confront an increasingly unstable megalomaniac with Norway on the front line (look at a map).  about the growing Russian threat to Europe’s richest country with its enormous sovereign wealth fund.  And yet, Store said he ‘hoped’ Norway might spend 2% of GDP on defence by 2026 but that we all have domestic politics.  Yes, Prime Minister, we in Britain also have domestic politics and yet we spend 2% partly to defend you! Just for the record was it not Norwegian NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg who said 2% was the baseline not the goal of Allied defence expenditure.  Oslo expects America and Britain to play a crucial role in Norwegian defence and deterrence.  If Norway is not prepared to spend the minimum agreed on defence NOW why the Hell should we bother?  All rich Norway is doing is transferring the cost of Norway’s defence onto broke Britain.

Second, no more NATO defence pretence, please. Admiral Rob Bauer, the Dutch Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, made an excellent speech about the vital need for a close relationship between NATO defence, deterrence and enhanced societal resilience. There was also a joke doing the rounds of the Conference. The next NATO Secretary-General must be a woman from central or eastern Europe and from a country that spends 2% GDP on defence…so it will be Dutch Prime Minister Marc Rutte. Rutte would make an excellent NATO ‘Sec-Gen’ apart from the minor fact that whilst he has been Dutch Prime Minister, he has done very little to strengthen the Dutch armed forces.  The NATO Defence Planning Process is in danger of becoming one of the great works of European fiction because of countries like Norway and the Netherlands.

Third, we must face reality with at least some urgency. There was agreement at the conference over the need to strengthen deterrence because Russia is committed to confrontation so long as Putin lives, and Moscow is learning lessons from its failures in Ukraine.  There was also agreement that whilst Russia might take 3 to 5 years the Russians will reconstitute their forces, they now have the war economy to do it.  In other words, the Alliance has that time to really strengthen its eastern and northern flanks.  And yet, there was little or no sense of urgency in Oslo.  Worse, whilst the eastern Europeans, Finns and Swedes understand the need for strengthened deterrence, Western European powers including Norway do not really feel threatened by Russia or anyone else for that matter except perhaps, Donald J. Trump.

Fourth, just tell Ukrainians the truth. The debate on Ukraine went something like this: “We are all very concerned by what could happen in Ukraine in the spring, and we all want to Ukrainians to win and push all Russian forces out of their country.  However, we have either given Ukraine most of what we can give them or we do not want to, we cannot expand military production quickly, and in any case, we need to re-equip our own forces.  Oh, and by the way, we will probably not offer Ukraine NATO membership at the NATO 75 Washington Summit, or even the road to NATO membership.  But don’t worry, some of us will offer Ukraine bilateral security guarantees just like the ones we gave Poland before World War Two”. In other words, despite what Allies are saying in public whilst preserving the independence of what is left of Ukraine is sort of important (have a look at another map), as far as the rest of us are concerned Russia can have Crimea and Donbas.  

Deploy the Trolls!

Julian Lindley-French

 

Escalation by Proxy?

 

“Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the ‘falling domino’ principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So, you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have profound influences”.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 1954

Dominoes

January 18, 2024. Much is being made in some Western media about apparent connections between the war in Gaza, missile strikes in the Red Sea, global supply chains and geopolitics. It is as though the world is again the same row of dominoes that so exercised the late Henry Kissinger between 1955 and 1976.  Does such a simplistic analysis stand up to scrutiny or by making connections where none really exist does the world appear more dangerous than it really is?

The world today is clearly more dangerous than it was twenty-five years ago.  That was the message both British Foreign Secretary, David Cameron and Defence Secretary, Grant Shapps gave during their respective speeches over the past week with the Middle East the apparent crucible where local, regional, and geopolitical conflict meet. What is clear is that whilst all the world’s most powerful states are in some way involved, they are being equally careful to avoid escalating the conflict in Gaza to the point they go to war with each other.  Iran clearly does not want a war with either Israel or the US. Russia is focussed on Ukraine, whilst China seems primarily concerned about preserving the global supply chains that have made it rich and powerful, whilst Europeans simply want to remain comfortable and dependent.

Escalation by Proxy

There is a systemic war underway, but it is not being fought directly but rather escalation by proxy. It is almost a systemic war, a world war in the grey zone, and stretches from Europe through the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific.  It is a war in which state and non-state threats to the West merge into a form of grand strategic asymmetry and in which the great powers use smaller ‘powers’ to probe for chronic vulnerabilities in the societies and systems of their enemies. It is also a war of technology. Fake news and cyber-attacks are the short-of-war weapons of grand asymmetry designed to exploit weaknesses in democracies caused by increasingly atomistic societies. Using the latest cyberware deniable troll factories constantly seek to disrupt and distract powerful adversaries and threaten the critical digital nodes and infrastructures open societies rely on. Consequently, deterring such threats is no longer simply about the demonstrable capability of conventional and nuclear armed forces, but also a proven capacity to respond to the information and cyber domains, much of which is dependent on space-based systems.

Phoney war?

It would also be easy to suggest this is a phoney war between autocracies and democracies.  That, indeed, is one of the many layers of conflict implicit in this war, but a better characterisation would be to see this struggle as between those who benefit from the current status quo and those that believe they have lost out to it. This is leading to a host of coalitions and ententes none of which are particularly stable.  In the Middle East, through the Abraham Accords Israel is in an anti-Iran accord with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf States. Russia and Iran are in an anti-Israeli and by extension anti-American coalition and trying to use that to weaken US resolve in Ukraine and wider Europe.  Iran is using proxies such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen to force Israel into a two-front war. China is tacitly supporting Western efforts to keep global supply chains through the Red Sea even as it seeks top keep the US out of the South China Sea to isolate Taiwan. Europeans are simply hoping it does not bother them too much even as the EU’s Frontex announced this week that there was a 17% increase in the flow of irregular migrants into Europe in 2022-2023, the highest number since 2016 with many saying that their ultimate destination is Britain.   

Grey asymmetry and Western strategy

Three things are clear:  grand asymmetry is morphing into a systemic grey war; that said war is making the international system ever more fragile; and the shape of the future will depend on whether the US can escape from its domestic political psychodrama, Europeans can climb down from Euro-utopia; and to what extent control freak Beijing continues to see globalisation as an instrument of Chinese grand strategy; and whether or not Moscow and Tehran can be put back in their respective nonsense boxes.  Given the world-wide forces at play it would be easy to make the same mistake made by Kissinger and others back in the 1950s and 1960s and see connections and dominoes where none really exist.  There are other lessons from the past which should rather be heeded such as 19^th century British diplomacy which took a very pragmatic view of threats and dealt with each one iteratively by applying specific knowledge to specific cases. 

What is needed, and as always, is a coherent Western strategy in the face of such complexity to preserve the rules-based order which is now under attack and detach one conflict from another. Any such strategy would in turn need resilient solidarity (at best partial), sustained engagement to resolve each conflict (no evidence as yet), the replacing of highly efficient but fragile supply chains with more resilient and redundant trade networks (no evidence as yet), assured Western access to micro-chips and rare Earth minerals (no evidence as yet), supported by greater economic resilience (no evidence as yet), military capability relevant to the threats at hand (some increases in European defence expenditure but, for example, the British have a £16.9 billion shortfall between states ends, ways and means), and a European willingness to once and for all get their hands dirty in the messy mire that is contemporary geopolitics (no evidence beyond the rhetorical).         

Ultimately, the worldview of falling dominoes was not only lazy analysis, but it was also ideological and dangerous.  Therefore, the West should be seeking to divide China from Russia, isolate Iran from its region, and contain Russia by exploiting its many weaknesses. Then if one domino falls it will not trigger a cataclysm.  After all, that is the very purpose of grand diplomacy in grand strategy.   

Julian Lindley-French   

2024 or 1848?

 

“Where nationalism means the lust for pride and power, the craze for supreme domination by weight or force; where it is the senseless urge to be the biggest in the world, it is a danger and a vice. Where it means love of country and readiness to die for country; where it means love of tradition and culture and the gradual building up across the centuries of a social entity dignified by nationhood, then it is the first of virtues”.

Winston Churchill’s Speech to the Dutch States-General, May 9, 1946

In 1848, a wave of revolutions swept across fifty European countries. Whilst many insurrections were driven by a liberal desire to overthrow aristocratic elites the underlying force was nationalism. 2024, I fear, will be 1848 redux: the year of nationalism, and not just in Europe. It will have profound implications for the New Geopolitics.

It is not often I disagree with Churchill’s insights about power and identity, but on this occasion I do.  There is no such thing as good nationalism.  What Churchill was referring to as “love of country” was patriotism, not nationalism.  There is a profound difference.  Nationalists tend to be large groups motivated by an extremist belief that they and their respective countries are intrinsically superior to other countries, normally driven by a false narrative of history. Nationalism is thus the uncontrollable thin end of a very unpleasant political and geopolitical wedge.  It is also one step short of fascism, the totalitarian control of a state by a relatively small and usually murderous elite who not only believe they are superior to everyone else in their own society who do not share their rigid views, but willing to impose their beliefs on others beyond their borders, usually in the name of some past ‘glory’.  

Fascism, Nazism and Communism also have many similarities, especially for those on the wrong end of them, but whereas the former is a murderous form of extreme nationalist government the latter two are/were murderous ideologies involving racial and ethnic superiority and hatred of ‘the other’, or class war. Historically, fascists and aristocrats have also often made common cause but for very different reasons, for whilst the former is populist the latter is anything but.

Today, fuelled by social media nationalism is fast eroding the institutions set up in the wake of World War Two to prevent the extreme state behaviour that twice led to war in Europe. That is what institutions do, when they work – aggregate, legitimise and mitigate. It is not without albeit understandable irony that it is the Germans who are most concerned about this erosion. Once embedded state power is leaking out of institutions and again becoming increasingly nationalistic in the relatively few states that are the real competitors in geopolitics.

The problem is that the response of the European elite is not unlike that of their conservative forebears in 1848 which is precisely what in 2024 makes Europe vulnerable to nationalism.  In June, elections to the European Parliament will take place. The Brussels Eurocracy is profoundly concerned that their liberal, ‘ever more Europe’ parliamentary majority which has for decades rubber-stamped the concentration of ever more unaccountable power in the hands of ever fewer elite hands will be defeated by a rag-tag array of nationalists.  They want power given back to Europe’s nation-states, but only so long as they control it.  Much like 1848 the drivers are mass migration, wars, poverty, fear of the other, and a sense amongst many that the EU has taken power ever further from the citizen to the benefit of a distant, out of touch and rich European elite who look and behave ever more like an aristocracy. 

Many readers of these missives will recall that I was both tough on the EU and yet believed Britain should have remained in it. The reason was simple: when the distance between the individual and power in a democracy becomes ever greater, power by its very nature becomes ever more unaccountable and those who wield it ever more a caste.  Europe is all too historically prone to the abuse of power by those who rule it which Britain has always prevented.  These days it is those who routinely ‘champion’ democracy even as the EU routinely flouts it and it is the citizen who must be the voice of restraint, in much the same way as a slave would stand behind a Roman general on his war chariot as he entered the Porta Triumphalis whispering, “Remember, you are mortal”.   

The Real Nationalists

For all the self-regarding superiority of the European elite I have seen at close quarters they simply think they know best.  They are not the real gilt-edged nationalists who are already doing mortal damage. Xi Jinping is a Han nationalist masquerading as a Communist, who has no need to concern himself with elections as he has been made China’s President/Emperor-for-life.  In his New Year’s address Xi made it clear Taiwan will be brought back into the fold one way or another. Putin, on the other hand, is good old-fashioned Russian imperialist-nationalist masquerading as an anti-fascist. In March, Putin will ‘face’ a presidential election but as he is also president-for-life and thus ‘indispensable’ for a wartime Russia in a war he started the ‘election’ will also be anything but as he endeavours to rebuild the never built Novorossiya empire.

Whilst China and Russia are the ‘usual’ nationalist suspects they are not alone.  In May, the world’s largest democracy, India, will elect members of Parliament, the Lok Sabha.  It is almost certain that the current nationalist BJP Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, will be returned to power.  Modi is partly motivated by resentment at India’s past treatment by a former colonial power, Britain, and partly by Hindu nationalism. He has a willing victim in Britain which is kowtowing (Shabdkosh) to New Delhi in the hope of a trade deal even as Modi moves closer to Russia and away from Britain and West.  Humiliating the needy old colonial master will do nothing to damage his electoral chances, which is helped by useful idiots in London who have decided the British Empire was pretty much the Original Sin and that the British should, therefore, prostrate themselves before the likes of Xi and Modi for past imperial ‘crimes’.  

Not So Useful Idiots

Talking of (not-so) useful idiots the British will also hold a General Election in 2024 that could well see Britain being Britain – perverse.  It is likely a Labour Government will be elected even though the reasons it will be elected will be because the country is moving to the nationalist Right on issues like mass immigration upon which the Labour Party is traditionally soft.  The reasons are twofold.  First, Nigel Farage, Mr Brexit, will return to frontline politics by leading the Reform Party thus siphoning off many votes to the right of the Tories.  Second, the spectacular incompetence and weakness of the Conservative Party in government means many True-Blue Tories will simply not bother to vote. They will thus wake up to a Labour Government as split between the centrists and the hard Left as the Tories are between the centrists and the Hard Right.  

Then it is the turn of the Yanks!  In November, the Americans go to the polls in their quadrennial presidential elections.  My bet is that President Joe Biden will not run, partly because he can hardly stand. His opponent? One Donald J. Trump, the isolationist’s nationalist. If he regains the White House, and depending on which way Congress will go, there is every reason to believe that a second term Make America Great Again (Again) Trump will be a nationalist isolationist Trump as his focus will be on the ‘war’ he will conduct on what he calls the Washington swamp.

There will be at least one constant throughout 2024; efforts by both Putin and Xi to cyber-rig all and every election of all and any geopolitical consequence.

2024 or 1848?

Julian Lindley-French

Ukraine: Why America MUST Lead

 The Alphen Group
Geopolitics, Strategy and Innovation

Mr Mitch McConnell, US Senate

Mr Chuck Schumer, US Senate

Mr Hakeem Jeffries, US House of Representatives

Mr Steve Scalise, US House of Representatives

December 18^th, 2023

Sirs,

Open letter to the Leaders of the United States Congress

The undersigned members of The Alphen Group (TAG) urge the United States Congress to approve expeditiously the Administration’s request for continuation of assistance to Ukraine, a sovereign nation that was attacked without provocation by Russia and now is valiantly defending its territory, democracy, and the rule of law.

Ukraine’s fight is not only in defense of its own sovereignty and territory, but also on behalf of the West, its values and way of life, which Russia seeks to replace with an international system more welcoming for dictatorships. Russian President Vladimir Putin has no apparent intention to reverse Russia’s aggression or to seek a negotiated settlement on any terms other than complete victory. The United States and its allies must help Ukraine prevent Russia from winning a victory that would both be disastrous for the people and country of Ukraine and threatening the future security of the United States and its allies.

We do not take this position lightly but rather following debate among ourselves around the costs and benefits of a variety of US and NATO policy approaches. This war is at a tipping point at which decisions made by the United States and its NATO allies and partners will determine whether the outcome is favorable to their interests or disastrous for Ukraine and the West. The West must convince Putin that time is not on his side. American aid combined with continued European assistance will do that. Failure of the United States to lead would create conditions for a Russian victory.

Strong action supporting Ukraine at this point would fundamentally strengthen NATO cohesion. The European NATO allies have made important contributions to Ukraine’s defenses and aspirations to become a member of the European Union (EU) and NATO. The EU’s recent decision to open membership negotiations with Ukraine was a major step forward toward Ukraine’s goal of joining Europe and the West. We are urging European and Canadian leaders and parliamentarians to continue their support. In many cases, European allies have been the first to provide certain categories of weapons, such as tanks and longer-range missiles. They have paid large costs implementing sanctions against Russia and shifting away from dependence on Russian energy.

Ukraine is still resolute, but it lacks the means to achieve decisive battlefield results.  Accordingly, the United States needs to accelerate the delivery of fighter aircraft and long-range artillery that Ukraine must have to succeed and end the conflict.  If implemented beginning in early 2024, Ukraine can be equipped with the capabilities it needs to succeed by year’s end.

Not continuing U.S. support for Ukraine would be a huge failure of bipartisan foreign and defense policy and would weaken America’s leadership internationally as well as in Europe. Importantly, reaffirmed U.S. and European support would send a strong message to China, Iran and other authoritarian regimes that aggression against their neighbors cannot succeed.

A Ukrainian success in 2024 would have far-reaching effects, not only in Europe but globally. A defeated Russian military cannot pose a direct threat to its neighbors for years to come. Aggressive and authoritarian regimes like China, North Korea and Iran would be chastened, not encouraged. The stability of the international system and the rule of law would be strengthened.  Global food security and supply chain disruptions would be eased. Most importantly, the prospects for direct conflict with the Russian Federation would be greatly reduced with a Ukraine whole and free.

For these reasons, we urge Members of Congress of both parties to recognize the critical importance of maintaining and increasing support for Ukraine, on behalf of U.S. interests and those of the international system more broadly. Any other choice would represent a failure of U.S. leadership, opening the door to a much more dangerous world in the future.

Michal Baranowski, Poland, Director, German Marshall Fund of the United States

Rob Bertholee, The Netherlands, former Director-General Netherlands General Intelligence and Security Service

John Bruni, Australia, Founder/CEO, Sage International, Australia

Paul Beaver, United Kingdom, former Specialist Advisor to the House of Commons Defence Committee

Robert Bell, United States, former NATO Assistant Secretary General for Defense Investment, and Defense Advisor, US Mission to NATO

Hans Binnendijk, United States, former Special Assistant to the President for Defense Policy

Henrich Brauss, Germany, former NATO Assistant Secretary-General for Policy and Planning

Jan Broeks, The Netherlands, former Director-General, NATO Military Staff

Kerry Buck, Canada, former Canadian Ambassador to NATO

Vincenzo Camporini, Italy, former Chief of Defense Italian Armed Forces

Ivo Daalder, United States, U.S. Ambassador to NATO, 2009-2013

Marta Dassù, Italy, Senior Advisor for European Affairs, Aspen Institute Italia

Gordon B. Davis, Jr. United States, Major General, U.S. Army (ret), former NATO Deputy Assistant Secretary General

Sławomir Dębski, Poland, Director of the Polish Institute of International Affairs

Camille Grand, (France), former NATO Assistant Secretary-General for Defence Investment

Sir Christopher Harper, United Kingdom, former Director-General, NATO International Military Staff

Ben Hodges, United States, former Commander, United States Army Europe

James Holland, United Kingdom, Historian

R.D. Hooker, Jr., United States, former Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Europe and Russia, National Security Council

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, The Netherlands, former NATO Secretary General

Peter Hudson, United Kingdom, former Commander, NATO Maritime Command

Giedrimas Jeglinskas, Lithuania, former NATO Assistant Secretary General for Executive Management

Karl-Heinz Kamp, Germany, former President of the Federal Academy for Security Policy

Sarah Kirchberger, Germany, Director, Institute for Security Policy at Kiel University

Thomas Kleine Brockhoff, Germany, Director, German Marshall Fund of the United States, Berlin

Imants Liegis, Latvia, former Minister of Defence and Ambassador

Julian Lindley French, United Kingdom, Chairman, The Alphen Group

Stephen Neil MacFarlane, Canada, former Lester B. Pearson Professor of International Relations, Oxford University

Antonio Missiroli, Italy, former NATO Assistant Secretary-General for Emerging Security Challenges

Zaneta Ozolina, Latvia, Professor, Chair, Latvian Foreign Affairs Council

Giampaolo di Paola, Italy, former Chairman, NATO Military Committee and Minister of Defence of Italy

Jean-Paul Perruche, France, former Head of the EU Military Staff

Eric Povel, The Netherlands, former NATO Public Affairs Officer

Sten Rynning, Denmark, Professor of Business and Social Sciences, University of Southern Denmark

Diego Ruiz Palmer, United States, former NATO Special Advisor for Net Assessment

Paul Schulte, United Kingdom, former Director of Proliferation and Arms Control, UK Ministry of Defence

Hanna Shelest, Ukraine, Director of Security Studies and Global Outreach, Foreign Policy Council, Ukrainian Prism

Richard Shirreff, United Kingdom, former NATO Deputy Supreme Allied Commander

Stanley R. Sloan, United States, former Senior Specialist, International Security Policy, Congressional Research Service

Carsten Sondergaard, Denmark, former Ambassador to NATO and to Russia

Stefano Stefanini, Italy, former Ambassador to NATO

Jim Townsend, United States, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Policy

Patrick Turner, United Kingdom, former NATO Assistant Secretary-General for Operations; Assistant Secretary-General for Policy and Planning

Sandy Vershbow, United States, former NATO Deputy Secretary General and former U.S. Ambassador to Russia

Peter Watkins, United Kingdom, former Director General, Security Policy, Strategy & International, UK Ministry of Defence

Anna Wieslander, Sweden, Chair of the Board, Institute for Security and Development Policy

Rob de Wijk, The Netherlands, Professor and Founder Hague Centre for Strategic Studies

All signatories participate in a personal capacity.

Is This Ukraine’s Munich Moment?

 

“The settlement of the Ukrainian problem, which has now been achieved is, in my view, only the prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace. This morning I had another talk with the Russian President, Mr Putin, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine. Some of you, perhaps, have already heard what it contains but I would just like to read it to you: " ... We regard the agreement signed last night and the Western-brokered Russo-Ukrainian Peace Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our peoples never to go to war with one another again”.

What Neville Chamberlain might say about a possible Russo-Ukrainian ‘peace’ agreement

November 28^th. Is this Ukraine’s Munich moment?  It certainly looks that way.  News that the Americans and Germans (ironically) are pressuring the Ukrainians to negotiate with the Russians looks to any historian of any worth like a prelude to a very European ‘peace’ deal in which the aggressor gets rewarded and the victim compensated.  The flurry of visits to Kyiv last week by US Secretary of State Tony Blinken and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austen, not to mention the German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius were for a reason.  Naturally, the visits were given political top cover by announcements of increased support for Ukraine’s hard pressed armed forces but that was not the real aim.  Word is that President Biden does not want the war hanging over him during the US presidential election campaign or the NATO 75 summit in Washington in July.  The mercantilist Germans simply feel very uncomfortable being at loggerheads with the Russians, which explains why so many of the European companies who have set up in Turkey and other places to get around EU sanctions on Russia are German.    For once, at least the appeasers are not British.

In 1938, as part of the settlement of the “Czechoslovak problem” Chamberlain negotiated away 20% of the then Czechoslovakia. Any such deal would doubtless require Ukraine to hand over 20% of its territory to the Russians who would get to keep much of the Donbas and Crimea it has taken illegally by force, as well as Mariupol, a major Ukrainian grain port on the Black Sea.  I do not want to say I told you so, but I told you so. Back in August I wrote, “…it will also become apparent that the Allies have already given 90% of what they are going to give Ukraine, whether it is delivered as promised or not.”  I also wrote that in May that the 28 Western-trained and equipped Ukrainian brigades lacked the military weight to break through the Russian defensive lines in the south and east of Ukraine.  This was partly because the Russian General Staff had learned some painful lessons, but also because the West took so long to deliver the relatively limited supplies of arms it had promised.  Artillery is the defining feature of this very Russian war and it now transpires that the EU will fail to deliver the promised 1 million artillery shells by next March mainly due to an inability to upscale rapidly European arms production.  Meanwhile, Russia has received over 1 million artillery shells since early August from North Korea, and clearly with Chinese backing. In other words, Russia is winning the artillery war.

Why is this demarche happening now?  Keeping Ukraine alive IS a vital Western interest, restoring Ukraine’s 2014 borders, let alone its 1991 borders, is not.  There are several other factors, the most salient of which is the lack of a coherent Western strategy since the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.  The West has got into a habit of giving Ukraine just enough weapons to prevent Russia from conquering the whole country, but never signed up to Ukraine’s war aim of recapturing all the territory the Russians had taken.  Frankly, the risk of a wider war with the Russians over the Donbas and Crimea has self-deterred the West, which several European countries see as Ukraine having only borrowed from Russia, whilst for many Americans Ukraine is a large country faraway about which they know little.  Hard but true.

How would the West justify such a retreat (and it would be)? First, should there be negotiations (there are already extensive contacts with the Russians) the Americans and the Germans would play up the ‘victory’ of a rump Ukraine.  Second, Berlin and Washington, and no doubt Brussels and Paris (not to mention in time London) would say that by simply surviving as an independent country the sacrifice of so many brave Ukrainians was worth it.  Third, they would hint how much cheaper it would be for the West, with Europeans to the fore, to rebuild Ukraine if they do not have to pay for the war-torn Donbas and occupied Crimea.  Fourth, they would have secured an end to the killing by sacrificing some Ukrainian territory in support of Ukrainian sovereignty.    

How would Moscow and Beijing see such a Russian victory for that is how Putin would present it?  They would doubtless point again to the lack of Western resolve and the wide gap between Western rhetoric about values at the beginning of the war and the West’s interests during it. They would also point again to the West’s lack of collective strategic patience evident in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria and may well be shaping the response to Gaza’s 7/10 attack on Israel and Tel Aviv’s response. They would cite further proof that the West, Western Europeans in particular, are profoundly risk averse to the point of appeasement and all Moscow and Beijing must do is to out-wait them.  They would also highlight the seemingly eternal lack of Western cohesion and any really meaningful relationship between the ends the West claims to believe in, and the ways, means and risks the West is willing to invest to realise them - action without strategy. Above all, Moscow and Beijing would suggest that if the Americans and Germans acquiesced in such a ‘peace’ it would be little different from that imposed on Afghanistan, although its consequence for NATO and Europeans would be far more immediate and more dangerous.

Putin would see his vision of a Novorossiya and the rebuilding of a Russian Empire vindicated and doubtless believe he had successfully completed phases one and two. Phase one was the seizing of Crimea. Phase two, the successful if costly occupation of Donbas and Mariupol.  Phase 3? After he had rebuilt Russian forces, say 2030, he would move to seize Odessa and cut Ukraine off from the Black Sea. He would also seize all of Ukraine east of the River Dnieper, including the bread-basket. Phase 4 would take a tad longer, the timing of which would depend on the extent to which the Americans were preoccupied with the Indo-Pacific and the extent to which Putin could lure the Germans back into strategic somnolence and energy dependency.  The target?  Well, that is fairly obvious. The Baltic States.

In other words, the Americans and Germans had better understand the longer-term geopolitical consequences of any fix they impose on Ukraine for short-term political relief. If they fail to learn the real lesson from the Russo-Ukraine War that Putin really is a militarist and an adventurer and if Europeans again fail to properly rearm then all Europe would have gained is a strategic pause. It is also hard to believe Kyiv could possibly accept such a deal unless what is left of Ukraine is offered NATO membership the moment any such agreement comes into force.  That begs a further question: would all NATO members sign up to Ukrainian membership? 

The Munich Agreement is a warning.  In March 1939, Hitler broke the agreement and occupied Prague and the rest of Czechoslovakia made defenceless by Munich.   The irony was that Neville Chamberlain did understand the consequences and I should know. I wrote my Oxford thesis on British rearmament in the 1930s.   Britain brought time to further repair its defences by selling Czech sovereignty.  Are ‘we’ about to do the same thing to Ukraine?

Julian Lindley-French