Britain, Conscription, and a New National Guard

 “A house divided against itself, cannot stand.”

President Abraham Lincoln

A house divided

August 10^th. Britain is divided against itself. How can Britain afford both domestic security and national security at a time when both are under threat? Ever since the banking and monetary crisis of 2008-2010 British security and defence policy has simply not added up – literally. Successive British governments of all persuasions have also made huge errors of political and strategic judgement over the last thirty years one of which has been to rapidly increase the size of the population whilst cutting vital services. For example, since 2000 the officially acknowledged British population (it is probably significantly bigger) has grown from 58.9 million to 68 million people (Macronet) whilst services and other vital infrastructures have effectively been cut.  In 2010, the Cameron government even slashed the armed forces by 10% during the Afghanistan campaign. These failures of policy have helped turn a once stable society into a fractured one with potentially catastrophic social and political consequences. There is much to do to restore Britain, and it must be done quickly but here are two policy options that must now be explored: a new form of conscription and a British National Guard.

Whatever the strength of the British military instrument of power it is and will be effectively neutered if the home base is politically and socially insecure. Keeping the peace, be it at home or abroad, requires a continuum of effects from societal security to credible defence but both are being profoundly undermined by social unrest and the profound gap between official narrative and a dangerous lack of force and resource.  That is precisely why the likes of China, Russia and other autocratic states are applying hybrid war against the British to further exploit what they see as palpable weakness and instability.

At the high state-on-state end of the conflict spectrum keeping the peace will require Britain to deploy far more, more capable, and more capacious armed forces able to project power quickly allied to the capacity to move in some mass.  This is something General Lord Richards and I explore in great depth in our forthcoming September book “The Retreat from Strategy.”  The changing character of war will also demand of the British much greater fusion between emerging and disruptive technologies and military personnel. However, a new form of civil-military partnership will also be required allied to a new concept of civil defence to support communities from threats both within and without.  

The New Conscription

“There is a piece of shit at the end of this stick,” shouted the irate Sergeant brandishing his pacing stick in the face of an uncooperative soldier.  “Not this end, Sergeant,” came the reply. The word ‘conscription’ evokes a vision of unwilling citizens forced to ‘do their bit’ and ‘square bash’ (march) around draft parade grounds shouted at by an equally unimpressed regular sergeant. If there is one sure fire way to destroy the high-end operational effectiveness of a professional force it is to impose upon them people who do not want to be there and have little desire to cooperate. At the same time, cuts to the regular armed forces have clearly left Britain’s armed forces patently unable to meet the roles, missions, and tasks that Government demands of them. 

Future deterrence and defence will depend on a new form of civil-military cooperation which is precisely what the citizen armies of the past were.  It may still be needed in extremis but before that a new form conscription could come in the form of a partnership with the corporate sector.  Given the changing character of war the tech sector has a vital role to play in the form of apprenticeships are paid for jointly by both the state and companies.  Such a system would see young tech savvy civilians hone and develop their skills in support of national security and defence in partnership with the state.  Additional tax incentives for both companies and individuals could encourage such participation which will be vital in the coming age of the AI metaverse. Upon completion of service draftees would enter a new civil-defence technology reserve.

A British National Guard

The summer riots in England suggest that the traditional model of British policing is no longer sufficient to deal with a quite different society to the one for which it was created.  The police do have specialist counter-riot police and mutual support mechanisms, but they too have been subject to the cuts imposed by the Government ever since the banking and monetary crisis of 2008-2010. There are simply not enough of them and the majority are ill-equipped and ill-trained to deal with the spectrum of threats the modern ‘copper’ must confront.

The US National Guard is comprised of trained civilians under the Department of Defense who can be called upon both to support the civil authorities in times of emergency and deployed overseas in support of campaigns.  They also comprise an Active Guard and Reserve made up of former servicemen and women who retain their training and skills.  The irony is that the National Guard dates to December 1636 and was set up by the then English government in London as the Colonial Militia. Britain has long had a tradition of territorial reserves, as well as reserves and volunteer reserves which could be adjusted to form a new British National Guard. 

United we must stand

Striking a new security and defence balance will require London to do the one thing it is patently useless at – new thinking and putting the interests of ALL British people above and beyond the narrow obsession of bureaucratic politics between the Palace of Westminster at one end of Whitehall and Trafalgar Square at the other. It will also demand of a grossly irresponsible political class an end to the endemic policy short-termism (the COVID virus of politics) which has enshrined the politically convenient at the expense of the real job of government which is to face hard reality. Without fear nor favour?  There can be neither room for “we want the 1950s and we want it now” nostalgia which seems to be the motivation of at least some of the rioters, nor the naïve nonsense that there is no link between mass immigration and societal security.  Rather, British society is what it is, and it is that multicultural society that must be protected, secured, and defended. That means all its people irrespective of race, creed, or orientation! Period! To do that will require a new kind of partnership between a new kind of British state with a new kind of British society. It is called change.

However, when political and social cohesion collapses at home so does the capacity of a state to deter adversaries, defend its people, and realise its critical national interests.  Neither security nor defence can be credible if the home base is broken.  Projecting power and protecting people are one and the same. A house divided?  It is time for a re-think, London.  Are you (for once) up to it?  Are we (for once) up to it?

Julian Lindley-French

NATO 75 Essay: The Sad, the Mad, and the Bad

 

“…the Americans have not yet reached the stage where they regard themselves as equal partners in the enterprise [NATO]…They still feel that they are in the position of a kind of fairy godmother handing out favours for less fortunate Western European countries – provided always that the latter can justify their claims to such favours…it is up to the European countries to make the running and to provide the administration with the necessary ammunition to enable it to deal with Congress”.

Top Secret Memo from British Ambassador to Washington Sir Oliver Franks to British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, August 1948.

Ernie’s Vision

July 10^th, 2024. Much of the ‘noise’ at the NATO 75 summit in Washington will be rightly about Ukraine at which the Allies will again commit to keeping Kyiv the fight, but baulk at giving the Ukrainians anything like enough weapons to kick Putin out.  The real issue will be precisely the three issues that will not be addressed – the patent lack of strategic direction, the lack of leadership and Europe’s sad inability to deliver its own defence requirements.

There are many who can claim to be the real founder on NATO but one who has a real claim is Britain’s Foreign Secretary at the time of the April 1949 Treaty of Washington, Ernest ‘Ernie’ Bevin.  He was ably assisted by the then British Ambassador to Washington, Sir Oliver Franks. Having forged the 1948 Brussels Pact of European countries in mid July 1948.  Bevin came away from a meeting in The Hague firm in his belief that unless the US committed itself formally to the defence of Western Europe Europeans would be easy prey to the 350 Red Army divisions stationed close to the inner-German border.  Bevin’s assessment was as much political as strategic.  Germany was still as much the enemy as the Soviets, France had no government, Britain was broke, President Harry S. Truman was facing re-election and the rest of Western Europe did not matter militarily. Today? France has no government, Britain is broke, Germany only plays at defence, still uses World War Two to avoid responsibility, and just announced a real terms cut to its defence budget.  The only other European of defence note is Poland, forever brave enough but never big or rich enough of offset the weakness of its big neighbour. Worse, the Americans face an electoral choice in November between an increasingly cognitively impaired President Biden who is simply no longer up to leading the free world, and Donald J. Trump who does not want to lead the free world.   

Plus ca change? 

Bevin knew that only a Herculean effort on the part of the British and other war-devastated Europeans could really convince the Americans to re-commit to Europe at a time when much of America simply wanted to ‘bring the boys home’.  Bevin vision was for the Americans to guarantee European security through a North Atlantic Pact, in return for Europeans committing to ‘self-help’.  To that end, London committed to retain British forces in strength in Germany indefinitely at great cost. This was something which the strategically illiterate Cameron government did not understand when they withdrew HQ Allied Rapid Reaction Corps from Rheindahlen in December 2013.  HQARRC was the last vestige of the once mighty British Army of the Rhine. Moscow has and always will see power in military terms and the withdrawal of HQ ARRC was yet another symbol Putin understood only too well at a time when much of NATO was also mired in Afghanistan. At the time, I was associated with HQARRC and made my concerns clear to London about the dangerous political symbolism of closing down Rheindahlen. London did not listen. It never does. In February 2014, Russia seized Crimea.

If the Allies really believe in NATO they will once again have to make a Herculean effort to convince over-stretched, over-spent, over-wrought America to continue to guarantee Europe’s security.  THAT is the REAL issue at this Summit in a political vacuum and what awaits the new NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte.  He will need to use all his powers of persuasion because as Dutch prime minister he gutted the Dutch armed forces.  The only way the Americans can guarantee the future of Europe’s defence is if the Europeans bear the increasing burden of self-help. That will mean many of Western Europe’s political leaders breaking habits of a political lifetime and end the sad mealy-mouthed nonsense about the unaffordability of sound defence due to cost of their bloated welfare states. Bevin, a Labour politician, would be appalled.

NATO 80?

What will Hercules demand of NATO’s European pillar not the mention the Canadians?  The Alphen Group has just published a new Transatlantic Compact https://thealphengroup.com/2024/07/09/to-their-excellencies-the-permanent-representatives-on-the-north-atlantic-council/ which was superbly led by two American colleagues and NATO experts, Diego Ruiz Palmer and Stanley Sloan.  At its core is an assessment of the forces and resources Europeans will need to provide as the minimum political and force requirement.  The Compact acknowledges the new Allied Reaction Force (ARF) is an important milestone on the road to the vital NATO Force Model, but only if it is far more than simply re-badging the now defunct NATO Response Force.  It also acknowledges the superb work done by SACEUR and his team to create the ‘Family of Plans’ which provide the bedrock for a future Allied minimum force requirement.  The ARF is a high readiness, highly mobile and responsive mainly European force capable of deploying rapidly throughout SACEUR’s Area of Responsibility to reinforce forward defences, prevent a fait accompli by an adversary, and demonstrate unity.

So far, so good.  By 2030, the New Force Model envisages the NATO Response Force of some 40,000 troops being transformed into a future force of some 300,000 troops maintained at high alert, with 44,000 kept at high readiness. Whilst the new force will be held at 24 hours ‘Notice to Act’ the bulk of the NATO Force Structure will be held at 15 days ‘Notice to Move’.  Given that both air and naval forces will also need to be included a land force of, say, 200,000 would need at least 50 to 60 European rapid reaction brigades together with all their supporting elements. There are only 20 at best 30 today. 

The Compact is clear: by 2030 European Allies will need to provide collectively two thirds or more of NATO’s overall required operational capacity as measured in the rapidly usable forces, enablers and other capabilities needed.  Moreover, no Ally must be expected to contribute more than 50% of any individual NATO capability area, as pursued through the NATO Defence Planning Process, with non-US Allies providing 67% or more of any given capability area, recognizing that progress will be easier and faster in some areas than in others.

 

Deterring is doing! 

What NATO plans mean in practice are that NATO Europe plus Canada must by 2030, no later than 2035, deploy a combined MINIMUM operational land capacity of four fully-capable, fully-enabled, fully-ready Warfighting Corps (WFC), together with all the required combat, combat support and combat service support units.  Three fully-capable, fully-enabled, fully-ready Composite Air Strike Forces (CASF) with the full complement of defensive and offensive aircraft. Two fully capable, fully-enabled, fully-ready Non-US Standing Fleets in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean with sufficient operational capacity to be augmented at short notice.

By return, and given US commitments world-wide, Washington would need to permanently station in Europe a fully-capable, fully-enabled and fully-ready WFC (US Army’s V Corps); a fully-capable, fully-enabled and fully-ready CASF (US Air Force’s 3rd Air Force); and a fully-capable, fully-enabled and fully-ready US Navy 6th Fleet and  its  NATO  component  (STRIKFORNATO)  for  Allied  multi-carrier operations, and complemented by US Marine Corps and Special Operations Forces.  This force would provide SACEUR with five fully capable war fighting corps, four CASF air packages and three fleets.

European allies and Canada will also need to take further steps in every other domain of NATO European military capacity including strengthened missile defences, nuclear policy and practice and in both the space and cyber domains, as well as supporting civil measures to reinforce resilience.

Pillar Talk

At a meeting of the GEN 75 committee (aka the atomic bomb committee) in October 1945 Ernie Bevin famously said “We have to got to have the bloody Union Jack on top of it (the bomb)”.  Prime Minister Clement Attlee, Churchill’s wartime deputy, and Bevin understood the need for British power, not just to deter the Soviets, but also to influence the Americans.  Bevin wanted not only to demonstrate to Stalin that Britain still mattered but to the Americans that Britain could also add value to American security and defence.  It is precisely that which NATO Europe must again demonstrate to Washington.

In December 1948, Bevin rose in the House to make an impassioned plea for what he called the North Atlantic Pact.  “…I wish to submit to the House a further consideration in this matter, which is vital. All these instruments which unfortunately have to be provided to defend ourselves today are tremendously costly. To try to maintain an adequate Navy, Air Force and Army is almost too big a burden for any one country to carry by itself, that is if it is to stand by itself. Once we can, in the West, get this basis of collective security with the United States and Canada and the Western Powers, and others if they will come in, it should be possible to work out a rationalised system of defence so that while we assure our collective defence we shall not be draining off too much manpower from our economic resources and the development of our economic requirements”. 

THAT was the real reason for NATO 1949.  It is the also real reason for NATO 2024 given the need to deter Russian aggression and Chinese expansionism. Peace through strength.

Julian Lindley-French

D-Day 80!

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

Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill, statement to the House of Commons, 6 June 1944

D-Day!

6 June, 1944. 0900 hours Zulu. In the Combined Allied Forces on D-Day there are 61,715 British troops either on, approaching, or off the Normandy beaches, alongside 73,000 Americans and some 21,500 Canadians. Under Supreme Commander US General Dwight D, Eisenhower, Operation Overlord is a truly multinational effort. The Allied Expeditionary Naval Forces is led by Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay of the Royal Navy, the Air Group by Royal Air Force Air Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory and 21^st Army Group by General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery, victor of El Alamein. Of the five landing beaches three are under British command, Gold, Juno and Sword, and two under American command, Omaha and Utah.

The assault troops are supported by 6939 ships and craft of various sorts, together with the forces of many free nations – Australians, Belgians, Czechs, Dutch, Greeks, New Zealanders, Norwegians, and Poles.  There were also the 209 men of the Free French forces, including Kieffer’s 177 commandos, on their long, dangerous and distinguished way home. One of the first to be killed was Corporal Emile Bonétard, who was attached to Britain’s 4 SAS who at 0045 hours dropped by parachute into Plumelec, Brittany with the orders to block any German reinforcements heading north to the Normandy beaches.

They are supported by some 1213 warships of which 892 fly the White Ensign of the Royal Navy, with 3261 of the 4126-landing craft ferrying the troops ashore and often under intense fire also British. In total, 7700 ships and craft have been deployed in support of the landings, together with the two giant ingenious floating British Mulberry Harbours without which the landings could not have happened. In the air, 12000 sorties are flown by some 2000 aircraft protecting the troops on the ground some 70% of which are either Royal Air Force or Royal Canadian Air Force.

At 0015 hours 6 platoons of the 2^nd Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, 6^th Airborne Division, attacked and within 15 minutes took a critical bridge (Pegasus Bridge) over the Caen canal that protects the eastern flank of the five landing beaches. The glider-borne force landed less than 150 yards from their target. Their mission was critically important because the bridge was the only way for the 21st Panzer Division at Falaise to get to the three British and Canadian beaches.

At 0026 hours Major John Howard sent the coded success signal “ham and jam”. They were relieved two hours ago by Lord Lovat’s Special Brigade and 7^th Parachute Division. The liberation had begun.

At 0058 hours the 7^th (light infantry) Parachute Battalion of the British Army began the first of the massed American and British ‘drops’ of some 13000 paratroopers behind enemy defences to help secure the landing beaches.

At 0545 hours a massive naval bombardment began from the fleets covering the beaches that included six British and three American battleships and monitors with their powerful 16-inch, 15 inch, and 14 inch main armament firing enormous car-heavy shells at targets often over 30 miles inland. They were supported by 23 heavy and light cruisers, 19 of which were British, three American and one Free French and Polish each. There were also 139 destroyers and frigates scurrying around often suppressing enemy fire close inshore. Of these 78 were British, 40 American, 10 Free French, 7 Canadian, 3 Norwegian, 2 Polish, and 2 Greek. Of the 508 other vital warships of varying functions (including landing ships, minesweepers, and anti-submarine ships), 352 were British, 154 were American and 2 were Dutch.

At 0725 hours troops of the 50^th Northumbrian Division, 69^th and 231^st Brigade and the 8^th Armoured Brigade were the first of the six American, British and Canadian infantry divisions to set foot ashore, although they had been preceded by the Special Boat Service, Royal Marine Commandos and US Rangers.

D-Day 70

Ten years ago, on D-Day 70, I had the honour to watch Beating the Retreat on Horseguards Parade in Central London as a guest of the First Sea Lord. This is an ancient British military parade that was performed meticulously by the massed bands of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines, joined by the band of the Royal Netherlands Navy and the band of the United States Marine Corps. The precision of the military bandsmen of three great democracies marching and wheeling around Horseguards reminded me of the enduring importance of the military alliance of the Western democracies forged on those magnificent but bloody beaches. As I watched, I also reflected that my life today would not be possible without D-Day – I am a Brit, I am married to a Dutch woman and live in the Netherlands. I am also a passionate believer in the United States and the continuing need for American leadership of NATO, as well as a European.

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

D-Day 80!

NATO was born on the beaches of Normandy. What are the critical lessons of D-Day for NATO today? First, the vital need for the firm political leadership of Churchill and Roosevelt who knew the risks but understood the need to take them. With another autocratic leader again threatening to trample upon Europe’s hard won freedoms today’s European leaders must look hard at themselves in the mirror of D-Day.

Second, the vital importance of effective combined and joint planning.  COSSAC, the Chiefs of Staff, Supreme Allied Command was built on an unparalleled level of trust between senior American and British commanders.  It provided the template for NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE).

Third, give the commanders the forces and resources necessary to do the job.  In 1944 the job was to storm Festung Europa and liberate Western Europe.  Today, it is to deter Putin from threatening or even attacking NATO.

Above all, the D-Day way of war was and is the Western way of war, the very essence of military innovation, particularly British innovation, a balance between appropriate mass of forces and the requisite manoeuvre of forces. The Allies put steel before flesh and equipment before people, but it also recognised that equipment without people, however advanced it may be, is a sure-fire way to lose. Britain was at the height of its fighting power on June 6, 1944, with a fully equipped, fighting fit force.  It is a far cry from today when under-funded, under-equipped and under-sized British forces can only play at ‘fighting fit’.

The Finest Day!

Britain’s Finest Hour was in 1940, but Britain’s Finest Day was on June 6, 1944.  A few years ago, I stood on the cliffs above Arromanches looking down on Gold Beach where the famed British XXX Corps came ashore. To my right lay Juno and Sword beaches and to my left the American beaches, Omaha and Utah. The sheer length of the 60-mile-long landing front was stunning.

To honour those brave, ordinary men who stormed the beaches we must complete the journey towards a Europe whole and free that began on that momentous day. We must reinvest in the defence of liberty and democracy for which my grandfather and my great-uncle (killed) fought. In November 1942, speaking of the British Commonwealth’s victory at El Alamein in Egypt Winston Churchill said, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. It is, however, the end of the beginning”. D-Day was the beginning of the end of World War Two in the European theatre of operations. The slog through Normandy, the Falaise Gap and the breakout east and north, and the liberation of Belgium, France and the Netherlands claimed hundreds of thousands of lives still. It was also the beginning of freedom, a journey without end.

At the Going Down of the Sun

By D-Day’s end of the 156,000 Allied soldiers ashore and the 195,700 sailors and airmen offshore and above, 4414 had been killed of which 2500 were American, 2500 British, and 370 Canadian.  There were also some 6000 wounded. Of the 50,000 Germans facing the Allies, between 4000 and 9000 had been killed with many taken prisoner. It should never be forgotten that some 20,000 French civilians died for France’s freedom simply in Normandy alone, without counting the cost of those tortured and killed as members of the French Resistance. From any perspective it was a stunning Allied victory. For me the greatest legacy of all is that I have the honour to count today’s German generals amongst my friends and my fighting forebears would have been proud of that. You see, D-Day was not about killing Germans, it was about destroying Nazism, just as today’s support for Ukraine is not about killing Russians, but ending aggression. It was about defending and securing freedom.

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

Thank you, Gentlemen. I owe you my freedom to write this and I will NEVER forget your sacrifice.

Julian Lindley-French

Appeasement, Realism, Collusion and Analysis

 “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last”.

Winston Churchill

May 28th. I am an analyst. I am not a politician and thankfully for Europe and the wider world I am not a commander. Some say I am a good analyst. If so, my job is to analyse, not proselytise or order.  Last week I was in Poland at the superb Strategic Ark Conference hosted by the outstanding Polish International Affairs Institute and led by my friend, the impressive Slawomir Debski. At the Conference I spoke to Polish ministers, senior commanders, as well as senior Ukrainian friends and contacts.

Like most reasonable people I deplore Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its subsequent atrocities. I am also firmly committed to a Ukraine that is whole and free and a Europe that is secure from further Russian aggression. BUT, I am not going to collude in the pretence of action where none exists. At the conference one senior Polish figure, who I greatly admire, rather sneered at so-called ‘realists’ for questioning whether Ukraine can evict Russia from the 18% of Ukrainian territory it is currently occupying and thus return to its 1991 borders. His argument was that all wars ebb and flow and whilst this is a hard moment for Ukrainian forces they will somehow magically prevail. 

Wars only flow, as opposed to ebb, because some internal or external factor changes. Take World War Two. Yes, Britain defied the Nazis in 1940 but could not defeat them alone. The external change factor was that America and Russia joined the war in 1941 which acted as a massive force multiplier for Britain’s efforts. At present, Ukraine is fighting an incompetent Russia led by an entrenched megalomaniac nationalist with both sides near exhaustion. The war is thus drifting towards stalemate over the bodies of thousands of dead young men, like some World War One cloud of mustard gas. In the time it has taken me to write this piece more will have been killed in the human meat-grinder that is eastern Ukraine.

And yet, I am being asked to pretend by leaders that Ukraine will win, even though Kyiv’s Western partners are clearly unwilling to take any risk or supply and re-supply the Ukrainians all the necessary equipment and resources they need. Many Western states are not even prepared to rapidly build up their own defence industries simply to replace the weapons they have already given Ukraine.

Let me be clear: as an analyst I will NOT collude with strategically illiterate and pretentious politicians who have done so much to reduce the West this century through their incompetence and risk aversion. They did it in Iraq. They did it in Afghanistan. Now, they are doing it in Ukraine. They are NOT even prepared to provide free Ukraine with the security guarantee of affording NATO membership. This profound lack of strategic imagination and leadership is not just a tragedy for those dying in this war, often horribly (Western publics never see that because our leaders treat us like children).

Freedom can never be secure in the absence of well-led power and playing politics with strategy is the very opposite of good leadership. Once again, Western politicians are asking analysts to pretend the emperor is magnificent when he really does have no clothes simply in the hope that the rest of the world does not see our nakedness…it does!

The tragic irony is that the West is so close to defeating Russia on Russia’s terms if only it had the political will and the courage to offer Ukraine a road-map to NATO membership. Historians will come to view Putin’s War as one of the great historical cockups. OK, he might gain some or all of Donbas and Crimea, but he has already lost Finland, Sweden, and the rest of Ukraine to the West, the very thing he wanted to prevent.

Let me also be clear to strategically challenged wishful thinkers: unless there is a very marked uplift in Western support for Ukraine the stalemate to which I refer will be highly unstable even if a new temporary Line of Contact is established. Ukrainian forces have been forced onto the defensive precisely because the collective West has decided for a host of mainly domestic factors and political weakness that its leaders do not really care enough to make it otherwise. The question now is whether the survival of the rest of Ukraine as a free state is a risk worth taking for Western leaders who time and again this century have demonstrated they lack both the strategic patience and acumen to prevail in long wars. And, how long before Putin launches the next phase?

To paraphrase Churchill: an appeaser is indeed one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last, whilst a colluder is one who assists the crocodile in the business of consumption. A realist, on the other hand, is simply one who understands that unless he can find a way to kill the crocodile first then he too will be eaten. Still, at least he is willing to give it a go…as Churchill did. An analyst? He or she is simply one who describes the crocodile, warts, teeth and all, for what it is…a bloody crocodile. Or, at least, they should be...

Julian Lindley-French 

Putin’s Power Protection Racket

 

Extortion

May 21st. General Omar Bradley once famously said, “amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics”. To Putin’s mind amateurs talk casualties, professionals talk attrition.

An extortion racket offers to ‘protect’ property, in this case Russia’s neighbouring states, whilst threatening to inflict the very damage that Russia claims to be offering protection against. The ‘threat’ Putin cites is the false claim of Western ‘fascism’. Putin has thus embarked on a policy of long grey zone coercion with the West aimed at what he sees as the lands ‘in-between’ Russian and Western influence. Such is his hubris that even EU and NATO members and aspirants are included in his hybrid war of coercion. That is why Putin replaced Sergei Shoigu as Russia’s Defence Minister 2ith the economist Andrei Belousov.

It is also why the Moscow-friendly government of Georgia in Tbilisi has imposed so-called Foreign Agents legislation on its citizens, which is simply a cut and paste version of Moscow’s own draconian anti-dissent laws. For Putin this is his way of systemic war against the free West for if a state cannot be conquered by Russia it must be coerced into aligning itself with Moscow.

Theory of victory?

There is much talk these days in the bien pensant class of the West of the need for a ‘Theory of Victory’. Few of them have any idea what it means. It is just one of those phrases that is fashionable for a time. Those that do have an idea seem to suggest a rather vague theory that ‘victory’ in war is more a subjective appreciation of a situation than an objectively measurable fact.  In other words, how to be in a war whilst pretending one is at peace, in which case, such theories of ‘victory’ tend to be little more than a semantic justification for appeasement. The problem is that Putin IS at war with the West, and it is a real war as far as Moscow is concerned albeit one that is not as yet hot.  And, given the extortion racket he is running he needs the West to recognise he is at war with it to justify the enormous costs he is imposing on both Russians and Ukrainians. Given that the first dictum of war is to do what your enemy least wants, perhaps the best one can say is that the West’s refusal to recognise it is at war is a cunning plan to frustrate Putin.

Russians have a ‘nation at war’ doctrine which is very different to contemporary Western ideas of war. There is absolutely no such thing to Russians as a war of choice. ALL wars are existential and even if the balance between information, digital and physical war may shift it is only because the Russian theory of victory is either complete control or annihilation. Western democracies tend to see their armed forces as state-sanctioned mercenaries who act on behalf of their respective publics precisely so that said publics can be kept in a child-like state of blessed ignorance. For Putin he is Russia and if he is at war all of Russia is at war and must be directed towards realising his theory of victory.

False history

History is a particularly important weapon in Putin’s hybrid war arsenal. A vital part of his theory of victory is to impose the Russian historical narrative not just on Russians but on adversaries as well. Take World War Two as an example. Much of the self-loathing West has bought into the idea that Russia won World War Two because so many Russians were killed.  There can be no doubt that millions of brave Russians died fighting Nazism but many of those perished at the hands of an incompetent Stalin regime. Between November 1937 and June 1938 Stalin purged the Red Army officer corps of 35,000 experienced commanders with several thousand of the most senior officers executed. Then, in late November 1939, launched the “Winter War” and invaded Finland but was fought to a standstill by the Finns in much the same way as the Ukrainians have fought Russian forces close to a standstill today. Even though Hitler’s intentions were clear, an in-denial Stalin did little to modernise his forces between the signing of the Nazi Soviet Pact in August 1939 and the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.

Much of the West has also bought into the idea that it was Russia’s sacrifice that really won World War Two in Europe. In fact, there is a very good reason Western casualties were relatively far fewer in World War Two than the Soviets. The Western Allies fought the war far more effectively and efficiently because they made a conscious decision to put steel and technology before flesh and people. Any Western theory of victory should concern how to convince Putin the West is not going to cave in to Russia’s protection/extortion racket? It will not be easy because Putin's theory of victory is the belief he can successfully exploit Western Europe’s lack of belief in anything much about anything anymore.

War aims

A twenty-first century technology before flesh strategy is needed. Between 1934 and 1943 the British constructed the world’s most advanced air defence system and most capable offensive strategic bomber force by building a technological and industrial surge capacity that saw radar and sonar invented, produced, and deployed. Recently, Anne Keast Butler, Director of Britain’s GCHQ warned that Russia was preparing for “physical attacks” on NATO countries, not just virtual attacks. Both China and Russia have undertaken systematic analyses of the many vulnerabilities with which Western states contend. Vulnerabilities which are at the very core of Putin’s theory of victory.

The paradox is that there is neither much new in the Russian way of war or the West’s lazy response to it. Russia’s inferiority complex with the West has traditionally led it to use coercion short of all-out war to force its neighbours to comply with its demands. The reason Moscow is endeavouring to turn the Russian way of war into an avenue is because Western leaders have created the opportunity for it to do so. For too many years the West has been in thrall to economics as the essence of statecraft whilst other Moscow-useful idiots have propagated the false belief that because security, prosperity and interdependence are intertwined war is impossible. One day these people will read a history book.

The West’s theory of victory should be simple, tried and tested: speak softly but carry a bloody big stick. Then there will be no need for these meaningless theories of victory. Unfortunately, the Western democracies prefer speaking loudly whilst carrying a small stick. Putin knows this, which is why his extortion racket might work. Yes, it is a bluff but never bluff a bluffer!

Julian Lindley-French

The Alphen Group: Ukraine Assessment.

 

May 3^rd, 2024

www.thealphengroup.com

“Plan A is not working; Plan B is needed”.

The Russo-Ukraine War is at a tipping point and the determining factor will be the extent to which Western powers are willing or not to support Ukraine in its war aim of regaining the land seized by Russia since 2014. In that context, four issues were considered: the current situation on the ground; Russia’s campaign aims in 2024; and the possible strategic, political, and operational impact of additional security aid packages to Ukraine, and the NATO 75 Washington summit. The aim of Russian strategy is to exhaust the Ukrainians politically and militarily by exploiting what Moscow believes is its greater strategic depth of people and power.  Therefore, West needs to re-state its support for Ukraine to demonstrate to Moscow strategic clarity, political determination, the capability and capacity to prevail, and strategic patience, none of which are immediately apparent.  

At the grand strategic level any political progress in Ukraine is only likely to result from direct talks about the wider geopolitics of European security between Russia and the West, more precisely between Russia and the US. There is uncertainty about the level and consistency of American support for Ukraine and, despite increased financial and materiel support for Ukraine the latest package could also be the last, particularly if Trump returns to the White House.  The impact on Ukraine of the loss of American support would be critical given the level of war fatigue in Ukraine and Zelensky’s increasingly precarious political position.  

At the military-strategic level, Ukraine is in a difficult position on the ground but the belief in London is that in “3 to 6 months the pendulum will swing back”.  Whilst Russian forces have suffered enormous losses Moscow has adapted its strategy to limit losses to its air power in particular by operating from within its territory using ‘stand-off’ attacks to destroy both Ukraine’s will and capacity to fight.  To counter the Russia strategy there is some evidence the US is supplying long-range ATACMS to Ukraine thus enabling Kyiv to target oil and other Russian infrastructure deep inside Russia vital to the war effort.

At the operational level Ukraine urgently needs more offensive power. Ukraine has switched to a defensive posture whilst it awaits the arrival of more Western war stocks.  For example, Russia currently enjoys a superiority of 15:1 in critical 155mm artillery shells and has adapted drones to attack Western supplied armour to some effect.  Moscow is also making effective use of electronic warfare which only Western forces could counter.  Kyiv also needs to reconsider its operational art and science. The 2023 Ukrainian summer offensive failed not simply because it lacked the military weight to breakthrough Russian defensive lines, but because Kyiv’s forces did not employ advanced Western equipment to best advantage.

If a ‘Plan B’ is to forge a position of relative Western strength in this proxy systemic Russo-Ukraine War the West will need to demonstrate to Moscow that it is Ukraine’s strategic depth. This will only be achieved if Ukrainians can rely on a secure supply of resources and money, the Western defence technological and industrial base is properly mobilised, there is unity of purpose and effort across the Euro-Atlantic community, and the West ceases to self-deter. Moscow’s war in Ukraine has come at an enormous price for Russia by “undoing the legacy of Peter the Great and Stalin” through the loss of influence in the Baltic Sea and Nordic Europe.  However, for Putin the war in Ukraine is existential for him and his regime and the West must understand that.  The West must urgently answer several questions, with the Quad powers to the fore.  What does the ‘West’ want? What price is the West still prepared to pay?  What happens to NATO if Putin can declare victory in Ukraine? Above all, what is Plan B and who should make it? 

There is a choice now to be made between making peace with Russia now at Ukraine’s expense in the hope it “would close a chapter and make Europe more secure”, or only making peace with Russia when Ukraine has been successfully defended and in so doing send a clear message to the world about the West’s collective determination to resist such aggression.

Julian Lindley-French, Chairman, The Alphen Group

Phony Baloney Power

 “Today, the UK is undoubtedly less politically and economically influential than in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. This trend is likely to continue given the simple arithmetic of demography and compound economic growth.”

The World in 2040: Renewing the UK’s Approach to International Affairs

Phony Baloney Power

April 22, 2024. Britain is now in a pre-war situation but London cannot afford to prevent it. On the one hand, Grant Shapps, the Secretary of State for Defence (Defence Minister), says the West is in a “pre-war” phase. On the other hand, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says defence expenditure will only be increased when Britain’s economic circumstances permit. Or, rather, London will only match threat to investment when economic circumstances permit.  Welcome to phony baloney power. 

Phony baloney power is the talk big, do-little appeasement by a British Establishment that lives in an alternative power reality to much of the world.  Let me give you the prime example - Ukraine. Following last week's Iranian attack on Israel Rishi Sunak said that Britain will always stand in the path of aggression.  At the same time, Sunak has given much of Britain’s fighting power to Ukraine, although not enough to ensure Ukrainians can successfully defend themselves. And, every weekend the Government watches on impotently as Central London is effectively surrendered to anti-Semitic and anti-Western hatred.

Perhaps the most egregious example of Britain's phony baloney power is British Foreign Secretary Lord David Cameron travelling the globe to lecture leaders who really understand about power when he clearly does not.  For most leaders with any sense of history it must be galling to say the very least to smile politely to the man who did more than any other recent leader to reduce Britain (and its armed forces) to what it now is, whilst he warns them of the dangers of making the wrong decisions. Chutzpah or what? At least he has the experience.

Phony Baloney Globalisation

Britain's leaders and other European phony baloney globalists have been caught out by hard on nationalists like Putin and Xi and now have really very little to deter them other than the hope the Americans will not vanish down the rabbit hole of their own domestic political nervous breakdown.  If Cameron needed any reminding that neither he nor his (my) country are as important as he seems to think then his recent failed visit to Washington should have been a painful reminder.  The message from the Americans was clear: you are a failed former prime minister in a failed government of a former great power that you did your utmost to weaken by imposing deep cuts on your armed forces right in the middle of a major campaign in Afghanistan.

He is sadly not alone. This month, three grandees of Britain’s foreign policy establishment published a report on Britain in the future world.   Entitled “The World in 2040: Renewing the UK’s Approach to International Affairs” my first reaction was that the report read like an elongated job application to join the incoming Labour government. To  be fair, Tom Fletcher, Moazzam Malik, and Mark Sedwill, make a host of sound proposals with which I agree such as modernising and streamlining Britain’s external engagement, not least the strengthening of the National Security Council, and  better aligning London's instruments of British power with the aims of British policy. However, the report still reads like a phony baloney globalist manifesto from those trapped in a no man’s land between values and interests.  It also reveals (again) that much of the British Establishment no longer believes in Britain as a power, or even believes Britain has a right to power.

Phony Baloney Policy

There are two statements that are particularly revealing of the extent to which managing decline and assuaging misplaced guilt remain the driving 'inspirations' of a failed British Establishment, not to mention much of academia. The first states that “Today, the UK is undoubtedly less politically and economically influential than in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. This trend is likely to continue given the simple arithmetic of demography and compound economic growth”.  Why?  Being very big and having lots of poor people is a curse not a blessing and no guarantee of economic growth. China faces demographic meltdown, India is a bureaucratic mess, the EU is like the old Forth Rail Bridge in that most of its enormous structure is devoted to simply holding itself up.  It is also trapped between centralising Eurocrats and decentralising democracy, whilst Russia is destroying its economy in a war. The real question those that lead Britain should answer is what role should a well-led top ten world economic and military power of 70 or so million relatively well-educated and networked souls which is at the centre of alliances and partnerships aspire to play in the world given that it is also a nuclear-armed island off the northwest coast of the Eurasian landmass?   Answer?  Be far better led!

The second statement reads thus: “We cannot simply brush aside concerns around the UK’s historical legacy and questions of nationhood. The exit from the EU has opened many questions, including in Northern Ireland and Scotland. Former colonies are making increasingly vocal demands around the need for reparations from colonialism and compensation for the loss and damage arising from historical industrial emissions”.  Why not?  That was then and this is now.  If  British rule had been so bad why have so many of these sovereign countries kept so many of the structures and institutions Britain bequeathed them.  I want these countries to succeed and I am prepared to offer them British aid to do just that if it is in the British interest.  Equally, I also want in return a 21st century relationship with these countries, not some archaic post-colonialism that implies that Britain will only increase its influence in the future world by assuaging the unassuageable. Reparations for “historical legacy” would reduce British foreign policy to little more than virtue imperialism.

The Black Knight?

Listening to Sunak, Cameron et al I am reminded of the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail who, despite having had his arms and legs chopped off by King Arthur, continues to believe he is invincible.  Fletcher, Malik and Sedwill even have the temerity to suggest that, “Over the medium term, allocate 1% GNI (Gross National Income) for international engagement to complement the commitment to 2% GDP defence spending”.  The use of 1% GNI is clever because it would be significantly larger than 1% GDP and as such is soft power sleight of hand because they also call for defence expenditure to be measured as a percentage of GDP, Gross Domestic Product. Sadly, such a call also reinforces the strategic illiteracy beloved of the British Establishment and the dangerous belief that Britain can only afford so much threat. Indeed, it is precisely why Britain's security and defence policy is mired in the mother of all ends, ways and means crises.

Peace and Power

What Xi, Putin, the Ayatollahs and others are once again demonstrating is that a state can only have real influence if soft power is matched by relevant and relative hard power.  Soft power without hard power is simply a covenant without a sword. 

To claim that Britain is both in a “pre-war” situation whilst London will only increase defence expenditure to prevent such a war when the economic conditions permit reveals the phony baloney that is British foreign. security and defence policy.  Britain is either in a ‘pre-war’ situation which demands they must do everything necessary to prevent it, or it is a peace. Phoney war? What is clear is that London has a peacetime mindset in a pre-war situation which is very, very dangerous. Why?  The benighted government economists and their lawyer friends who really ‘rule’ London simply do not understand how wars start.  They start because some autocratic asshole with far more power than brains has a romantic dream about rebuilding a lost empire in the hope it will confirm his control over the state and is prepared to sacrifice most of those around him to do just that!  

If we want peace, and I certainly do, now is the time for democracies like Britain to act irrespective of their immediate economic circumstances because now is the hour of danger.  That means ending the phony baloney power which is making war more not less likely.  To do that, London must end the exaggeration of Britain's influence, as well as the self-flagellation of Britain’s past and face up squarely to Britain’s future.  I will NEVER apologise for my country or its past.  That is because I am an historian. If some people don’t like that…tough!  

Julian Lindley-French