Syria 2024

 

“Do not try and do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not win it for them.”

T.E. Lawrence

Syria 2024

December 10, 2024. The renewed war in Syria had its roots in the October 7, 2023 attack on Israelis and Tel Aviv’s subsequent destruction of much of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran’s anti-Israel strategy across the Levant.  What will happen next? In reality, no one knows, least of all me. What I can discuss is where Syria is today, literally, and politically, the implications both for the region and the wider world.

Syrian is a country in the Levant of some 22 million people which is bordered to the north by Turkey, to the east by Iraq, to the south by Jordan and to the west and south-west by Israel, Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea.  Consequently, Syria is the epicentre of several contending and parallel geopolitical, regional strategic, confessional, and ethnic struggles.

Syrian society has been riven by ethnic tensions ever since the minority Alawite community seized power in Damascus led by former President Bashir al-Assad’s father and the Ba’ath Party in 1966. Syria is 90% Arab, with some two million Kurds plus other smaller groups making up the balance of a population that grew by over 300% between 1966 and 2013. It is a demographic shift that is evident across much of the Middle East and North Africa, as are many of the ethnic divisions.

Ethnic tensions have also reinforced the sectarian divisions that helped Islamist groups, such as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) which seized power in Damascus this week, to grow rapidly since its founding in Jordan. Syria is 87% Muslim with Shias making up 13% of the population, Sunnis 74%, with the rest small Christian, Druze, and other communities. In the past the Ba’athist constitution protected minorities and until those self-same minorities feel secure, peace is unlikely to be re-secured.

Regional-Strategic Implications

When the Arab Spring broke out in Tunisia in 2011 many commentators in the West hoped that some form of Western-leaning pluralism would emerge. In Syria today whatever happens in the coming weeks the result will certainly be pluralistic and anti-Russian given Moscow’s backing (and sanctuary) for Assad. However, it is unlikely to be pro-Western either. Rather, there is a very real danger that ethnic, sectarian, and regional tensions will merge. For example, in Iraq tensions between Sunni and Shia tribes were reinforced by divisions between the Arab and Kurdish peoples. Iran and Turkey are looking on nervously.  Neither Ankara nor Tehran seems likely to permit the appearance of some kind of Kurdish ‘state’ which would have profound implications for Iran’s eastern and Turkey’s south-eastern provinces.  Israel is already moving to carve out buffer zones in both the Qumaitra Governorate in the south-east of Syria and southern Lebanon.

Syrian instability is also a profound threat to the region’s many precarious states in the region which only just managed to see off the Arab Spring in 2011, which led to the further emaciation of the power of already weak Arab states. Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon all suffer from a potent mix of contending ethnicities, sectarianism, economic decline, and enduring political tensions between states, rulers, and peoples. Islamist groups and affiliates of al Qaeda and Islamic State are also deeply entrenched across the region. Tel Aviv’s early moves to prevent Syrian chemical weapons falling into the hands of the new ‘regime’ suggests the very real chance that nuclear-armed Israel could be further dragged into a continuing conflict, especially if Jordan is threatened by some form of new Intifada that further exacerbates tensions between Israelis and Palestinians.

Most refugees simply want to escape danger, but a small minority also pose a very real threat to Europeans of all ethnicities and beliefs, which is why Britain, France, and Germany have moved swiftly to deny Syrians the right of asylum. The mass immigration of millions of Syrians, Iraqis, Iranians, and others into Western Europe since 2003 has already led to sectarian and identitarian conflicts being played out in European cities and streets. Conflict breeds radicalisation and there is a clear and present danger of hardened Islamist fighters now coming (returning) to Europe.

Geopolitical Implications

Ideally, the first task of the Western statesman would be to recognise the Syrian war for what it is and indeed the limits of Western statecraft.  Syria is at the epicentre of conflicts across the Middle East that are now breaking out of one region and beginning to de-stabilise others. That is why a comprehensive strategy and strategic patience that works overtime to fill the power vacuum, prevent conflict and build stability. Such a strategy can only be crafted by big powers in support of regional powers. Herein lies the problem: in the wake of the disastrous Afghanistan and Iraq imbroglios the West have become mere spectators. There is a profound lack of real American strategic and political leadership in the region which is likely to be compounded by Trump 45. Europeans are both strategically incompetent and incapable.

Einstein once suggested that the only way to counter the unimaginable gravitational pull of a black hole is with countervailing superior power. If the Syrian vacuum is to be ended such power will mean far more than superior kinetic force. At the very least, a serious Western strategy would need to be precisely that, Western. This would demand of Americans and Europeans the political will that conflict resolution will take a lot of time, immense resources, huge power, and loss. It would also demand a real and sustained partnership with states across the region and beyond.

Unfortunately, there is no ‘West’ in the Middle East or anything like the requisite political will. President-elect Trump does not want America dragged into another entangling war beyond supporting Israel. The ‘major’ Europeans have swapped hand wringing over real past imperialism for the nonsense that is virtue imperialism.   For the West, the Syrian war had a dreadful beginning, an appalling muddle, and with no end in sight. There are no statesmen and little statecraft.  To paraphrase Churchill what happened in Syria this past week is certainly not the end, it may just be the end of the beginning.

Julian Lindley-French

Virtue Imperialism: Law, Disorder and Power

 READ THE RETREAT FROM STRATEGY: A TIMES TOP FIVE BOOK ON WORLD AFFAIRS https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/the-retreat-from-strategy/

“Covenants without the sword are but words and of no use to any man.”

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan 1651

The Tyranny of Lawyers

December 4^th. Is the Starmer administration the first British government committed to actively undermining the British interest? No, I am not one of those people stupidly calling for the new government to step down and I am willing to give it a chance, but its first missteps have me profoundly concerned. Like millions of Britons, I am desperate for a competent and pragmatic government grounded in reality. Thus far, all I see is ideology, more incompetence…and lawyers.

I suppose that is hardly surprising given Starmer is himself a human rights lawyer. Ever since the Human Rights Act was enacted by the Blair administration and the European Convention on Human Rights was incorporated into British law, British foreign and security policy has gone bonkers. Worse, Britain’s tradition of international pragmatism has been replaced by the tyranny of activist lawyers’ firm in the belief that law is power and that the rules-based system can only be maintained if states like Britain are constrained. And all this just when Putin, Zi, and soon Trump will drive several London buses through said rules-based order.

Virtue Imperialism

Britain’s retreat into lawfare has not only seen the abandonment of statecraft, the considered exercise of all instruments of power in pursuit of the British interest in an anarchic world in which power trumps (excuse the pun) law. The abandonment of statecraft has also seen guilt for past British imperialism replaced by virtue imperialism in which ‘policy’ has become legal atonement for perceived past sins, mainly imagined. Government lawyers have convinced a whole succession of weak British political leaders that such guilt can only be atoned for by London claiming the legal-moral high ground at its own expense. Such legalism is not confined to Britain with the judges at the International Criminal Court now making law where none hitherto existed enabling British lawyers to then cite such judgements to justify the further constraining of British power and action.

Nowhere is this more apparent than Britain’s ridiculous virtue imperialist decision to hand over the Chagos Islands to distant Mauritius and pay for the privilege. This, even though the Diego Garcia air base is vital to US operations in the Indian Ocean and beyond. Foreign, Development and Commonwealth Office lawyers say the decision will further distance Britain from its actual imperial past and in any case the base is protected by a ‘security protocol.’  No, it isn’t! Why do you think the Russian Foreign Ministry has been supporting Mauritius to exploit a non-binding decision by the International Court of Justice in favour of the Mauritians? It is because the Chagos Archipelago consists of over 600 islands of various sizes and thus endows the sovereign owner with control over a huge area of the Indian Ocean around Diego Garcia.  Mauritius is in the pocket of Beijing who will move quickly to establish another base/eavesdropping hub close to Diego Garcia. Not only will this upset the Americans (believe me it does whatever the public utterances), it will also upset the Indians by extending China’s geopolitical reach.

The Special Relationship?

One of the many lame justifications for Britain’s lack of strategic ambition implicit in such decisions is that Britain is not the power it was in 1941 when Roosevelt coined the phrase ‘United Nations’. If that means Britain is no longer the world’s leading naval power or second economy, then sure. However, Britain is still America’s most powerful military ally in Europe and the choices London makes profoundly affects American foreign, security and defence policy at a time of profound American overstretch. Look at the facts. In 2024 Britain is still the world’s sixth biggest economy and defence investor. The other top five? China is the adversary, Japan is far away, Germany can’t be bothered, India tends to side with Russia, Saudi Arabia is, well, Saudi Arabia.

Law, Disorder and Power

Power is as much a burden as a blessing. For too long London has been hiding from power and using lawyers to do it by retreating into legalism. Legalism, you see, is the absence of leadership. It is non-power presented as soft power. It leads to the most perverse of judgements such as the utter betrayal of Britain’s own soldiers, most notably the SAS, for putting their lives on the line at the behest of serpentine politicians. London’s abandonment of power under the guise of legalism and virtue imperialism also encouraged Putin to believe he could get away with a full-scale military invasion of a Central European country in 2024.

British legalism is founded on the misplaced belief that if London plays legal chess the rest of the world will eventually stop playing power poker.  It is an equally misplaced belief that through virtue imperialism Britain will lead the world towards some form of universalist Kantian sense of duty through self-imposed restraints of critical British self-interest. It is a legalist fantasy in which virtue imperialism fast leads to virtual imperialism and thus destroys the power of the West.

If Thomas Hobbes were alive today, he would write, “soft power without hard power is but words and thus of little use to any man or woman.”  Law without power is disorder, which is Britain today, an increasingly unstable country ‘led’ by activist lawyers and incompetent politicians that punches far beneath its weight.

Julian Lindley-French  

            

The Future Defence, Deterrence and Resilience Conference

In October, I had the honour of directing the Future Defence, Deterrence and Resilience Conference at Wilton Park in the UK. Under the leadership of General Lord Richards seventy leading practitioners and experts considered the vital relationship between people protection and defence-vital power projection.  My full conference report Cn be downloaded at https://thealphengroup.com/

Key Takeaway

The core contention of this conference was validated: that the capacity to project legitimate coercive power is central to credible defence and deterrence but that such power can only be credible if Allied and Partner societies are demonstrably secure to friends and foes alike.  The key to effective resilience and thus credible defence and deterrence is shared, well-designed, and responsive architecture built on a range of critical partnerships. These partnerships must be deeper and more planned than hitherto between NATO and the EU, between member-states and partners, but above all, between governments and civil society. There is much to relearn from civil defence during the Cold War.  

Introduction

The Future Defence, Deterrence and Resilience Conference was the third in a trilogy of policy-focussed future war/defence conferences. The 2022 Future War and Deterrence Conference considered defence strategy going forward in an uncertain and strategically competitive world for the Alliance and Partners. The 2023 Future War, Strategy and Technology Conference examined the impact of Emerging and Disruptive Technologies (EDT) on Allied and Partner defence strategy. The Future Defence, Deterrence and Resilience Conference focuses on the balance to be struck between people protection and power projection, civil defence and military defence in the face of the hybrid war in which autocratic powers are already engaged against open, democratic societies.  As such, the Conference explored the civil military partnerships that will be vital to affecting such resilience.

All three conferences revealed the urgent need for choices to be made by the governments of free nations if a balance is to be struck between capability, capacity, resilience and affordability to meet the challenge going forward of preserving a just peace and the Western way of life. Credible deterrence rests as much on convincing an adversary that society and governance is sufficiently secure to resist all forms of aggression, of which the fielding of adequate and legitimate military power is a vital albeit one part. Hybrid or ‘grey zone’ war comes in many forms, but it essentially seeks to disrupt, destabilise and disinform, possibly as a prelude to decapitation and destruction of a state. The threat must thus be seen as precisely that.

Systemic hybrid war by a peer competitor would also involve a sustained and systematic campaign to denude and degrade a state’s communications and energy nodes and infrastructure, as well as systems vital to the critical functioning of the state, continuity of government and governance, and the resilience and robustness needed to minimise the impact of attacks. Effective resilience demands effective consequence management, strong cyber defences (and offensive capability), civilian structures vital to the maintenance of the military effort and military mobility, and prevention of applied disinformation and propaganda on social media.

Core Messages

Too many democracies have been asleep at the wheel in the face of oncoming threats to freedom and the systems that underpin it. Governments have chosen to see such threats as “wicked political problems” too challenging and complicated to deal with, even if the consequences of their inaction are dangerous, even potentially catastrophic. Adversaries such as China and Russia have used a series of crises – 9/11, the 2008-2010 banking and financial crisis, the refugee and immigration crisis, Brexit, and COVID 19, to exacerbate divisions within open societies and thus weaken governance. They have also sought to dominate the digital domain and turn it from an enabler of communications into a weapon of misinformation.

There were several key themes that emerged during the course of the conference, focused on the need:

·         to share resilience best practice between Allies and partners;

·      for greater transparency between government, industry and citizens about the scope and scale of threats across the hybrid, cyber and kinetic war spectrum;

·         to forge a much deeper partnership between the state and citizens;

·         to build redundancy into critical national infrastructures allied to increased resilience;

·         to involve the defence, technological and industrial bases and a wider supply chain in thinking, planning and action about resilience at an early stage;

·         for a genuine EU-NATO strategic partnership across the defence, deterrence and resilience posture; and

·         for whole of government approaches that underpin whole of society responses to ensure effective consequence management.

Above all, there was broad agreement that a very real threat is posed to democratic societies and their capacity to deter adversaries and defend themselves if current attempts by autocratic states to undermine resilience succeed. Above all, there is a pressing need for all Allies and partners to know the State of Resilience in their respective countries by undertaking national audits based on a shared NATO and EU methodology.

Deterrence is only credible in the minds of an adversary if they are convinced that under no circumstances will they achieve expansionist and adventurist goals through coercion, be it real or virtual. Traditionally, deterrence has been built upon the credibly demonstrable capacity to project military power. In the 21st century power projection demands clear evidence of people protection, meaning that open societies have the political and social resilience to withstand ‘All Threats Warfare”. Over the past thirty years Western societies have become ever more complex and diverse as well as ever more open. Given that such openness is the very quality the West sees as essential to its ‘way of life’ defending it is unlikely to succeed unless there is also a new form of adaptive deterrence built upon resilience. That is why people protection is as important as power projection. Resilience means not simply the capacity to resist imposed shocks but to recover rapidly from them governmentally, societally and economically, allied to an indisputable capability to impose unacceptable shocks on adversaries and their societies and thus directly threaten the ability of autocrats to remain in power. Therefore, the free West not only needs to get sharper, but it also needs to get harder.    

Julian Lindley-French and David Richards

Riga Test 2024: Mean What we Say, Do What We Say!

 “That’s why I argue that the defence of the UK starts in Ukraine. It’s why I argue that Estonia and the border with Russia is our front line, not just theirs. That’s the first task. It’s one of statesmanship. It’s one of diplomacy. It’s one of recognising the power of deterrence, and we haven’t in the past.”

UK Secretary of State for Defence, Rt Honourable John Healey MP, November 2024

November 12. This is a tale of three cities – it was the best of times; it was the worst of times and all that. This past month I have been in two beautiful and historic cities of Riga and London whilst in Washington they await the arrival of Caesar Donald J. Trump who has just crossed the Rubicon and will soon cross the Potomac (he is coming the long way round from New York).

My purpose in Riga was to attend the superb Riga Conference which I have had the honour of attending since its inauguration. Every year I set the Riga Test which can be thus summarised: can the good people of Riga rest easier in their beds this year compared to last. The answer is marginally yes, but only because Russia is screwing up its rape of Ukraine more than the Western European allies are screwing up NATO’s defence and deterrence…and only for now.

Russia will be back red in tooth and claw. First, because President Putin is lost in some myth about Mother Russia’s ‘great’ imperial past and the past slaying of Western enemies, both real and very much imagined. Second, because he has got it in his head that Russki Mir was born in Kyiv and for that reason Ukraine must never be allowed to choose its own destiny. Third, because China is all too happy to impoverish Russia to stretch the American forces thin the world over and use Putin as a useful idiot to that end. Fourth, Donald J. Trump will not be stretched partly because he really does not care about anything that gets in the way of America First.

My second port of call was London. Both Riga and London are/were ports. My purpose in London was threefold. First, to promote my new book The Retreat from Strategy, which is still brilliant and very reasonably priced on Amazon and in all good bookstores. Second, to give my annual rendition of Henry V’s Band of Brothers speech to my own band of brothers (and sisters) at the Cavalry and Guards Club for which I am brilliant and very reasonably priced. We few, we happy few and all that.

It is true that the Russians are mired in a disastrously and incompetently Russian meatgrinder of a war in Ukraine and for that reason the immediate military threat to the Baltic States is perhaps less than it was prior to February 2022. However, contemporary warfare reaches across the hybrid, cyber, conventional, and nuclear domains and Moscow sees itself as already engaged in a war with the West across several domains.

At the Cavalry and Guards Club I had a delightful dinner with Lord George Robertson, who is one of my political heroes not least because he is to Scotland what I am to Sheffield. I am not going to reveal the contents of that discussion albeit to say I came away encouraged. Robertson is leading the new British Government’s defence review which is due for completion early in 2025. The fact he is leading it convinces me the review will be a properly strategic NATO-First review in marked contrast to the political PR London has published for the past twenty or so years. For too long strategically illiterate Treasury economists have demanded London only recognise as much threat as they think Britain can afford and refused to consider the economic and human consequences of a war in Europe, they have helped cause by forcing Britain to punch beneath its weight in NATO and Europe’s defence.

Which brings me to Washington. My Ukrainian friends are becoming increasingly cynical about the ‘whatever it takes’ rhetoric coming out of London when it is clear that London has neither the intention to define just what the ‘what’ is, the means nor the risk-requiring will to do anything more than freeze the current conflict and thus leave Russia holding 20% of Ukraine.  At least Trump will be honest about that. He has already told both Putin and Zelensky that the war must stop and if not, he will punish both. If Putin does not end his war Trump will surge American support for Ukraine, if Zelensky does not stop fighting he will cut off US military aid which is 80% of the total effort. Either way, Crimea and the Donbas is lost to Ukraine. If they do what he demands Russia will be gradually ‘rehabilitated’ in both Trump world and Euro world primarily because the Germans are quietly hoping Trump succeeds.

What links Riga and London, apart from Ryanair and boozy Brits, is trust. The Latvians believe that Britain, other western Europeans, and Americans are committed to their defence. The problem is they do not believe it as much as they did last year. The coming tawdry deal over Ukraine will deepen their mistrust that whilst Trump at least does what he says, even if they don’t like it, western Europeans rarely do as they say. It is all smoke and errors. Back to London. The NATO Allies agreed to enhance the Enhanced Forward Presence in the Baltic States to further deter the Russians by increasing the size of their battalion-sized forces to brigades. All well and good. However, London is now suggesting that most of the ‘strengthened’ force will stay in the UK deterring no-one. Worse, there are those close to the defence review suggesting NATO needs to be “more realistic.” This is London-speak to mean that Britain no longer has either the ambition or the will to meet the very commitments it made to NATO in the 2019 Military Strategy, the Defence and Deterrence of the Euro-Atlantic Area Strategy, or the Regional Plans to which London signed up and which are central to what?  The deterrence of Russia and defence of the Baltic States.

So, Mr Healey, mean it when you say “Estonia and the border with Russia is our front line, not just theirs” because what I hear is that ‘our’ front-line far from starting at Tartu pretty much starts and ends at Margate. No more smoke and errors! That is the real test of Riga 2024.

Julian Lindley-French

Athens and Sparta, Israel and Iran

 

“The real cause I consider to be the one which was formerly most kept out of sight. The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired the Lacedaemon (Sparta), made war inevitable”.

Thucydides

It is a year since the barbarism of Hamas murdered over 1200 Israelis in the most disgusting manner possible.  In that year many tens of thousands of innocents and not-so-innocent have been killed, maimed and broken in Gaza and now Lebanon, whilst Israel has been under constant attack.  As ever, the West has wrung its hands and called repeatedly for cease-fires which they know have little or no chance of happening and, frankly, few want.  Why? The Wars of the Levant have been caused by Iran. The goal of the Iranian Supreme Authority is the expunging of the state of Israel, control over all Shia Muslim communities in the region, the suppression of Sunni Muslims and the expulsion of all Sunni Muslim powers, most notably, Saudi Arabia, and the West.

Tehran’s strategy has five main lines of action. First, to keep Jordan, Lebanon and Syria in a state of profound crisis. Second, to manipulate the Israel-Palestinian struggle to that end. Third, to use proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah to both threaten Israel and foment crisis across the region with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) the primary agent. Fourth, construct a nuclear weapon to neutralise the Israeli arsenal at Dimona and ultimately enable Tehran to conduct both regular and irregular war against Israel.  Fifth, to build a relationship with Russia that Tehran hopes could counter the influence of the US in the region.

Has the strategy failed? No, but it has suffered a major setback. First, the Hamas attack on southern Israel was not sanctioned by Tehran and Iran was not ready for the consequences. Second, Israel has systematically dismantled Hamas and Hezbollah thus effectively depriving Iran of its two main instruments of crisis and coercion in the region. Third, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States regard the failure of Iran at Israel’s hands as in their own critical interests. Fourth, Iran is still some way from building a viable nuclear weapon and has consequently been reduced to launching salvos of relatively unsophisticated intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBM) at Israel. Tel Aviv’s advanced Iron Dome integrated air and missile defence (IAMD), reinforced by the US Navy, has countered. Most of the Iranian missiles that struck open Israeli country on October 1st were effectively ignored by the Iron Dome tracking system. Fifth, Russia is fully engaged in Ukraine and has no interest and little capability to support Iran in a struggle with Israel, and by extension the United States.

Does that mean the end of the war?  No, it is just the beginning of the next phase. Iran will absorb Israel’s coming counterstrike. So long as Tehran is governed by the Iranian Supreme Authority it will continue to conduct both hybrid and kinetic war against Israel and use the peoples of the Levant as pawns in that struggle. Tel Aviv may have bought time in its struggle against Hamas and Hezbollah, but its brutal conduct of the war has simply stoked hatred for another generation of Palestinians and much of the ‘Arab Street’ beyond. It is a struggle which will doubtless profoundly affect neighbouring Europe.

What is now likely to happen? For Tel Aviv the 2010 Accords with the Palestinian Authority are dead and with it any hope of a Two State Solution.  Israel will now seek to build buffer zones in Lebanon in the north, the Sinai Desert in the south, and Jordan in the East.  Israeli strategy thus entails Tel Aviv’s complete control over all the lands from the Mediterranean Sea to the River Jordan. This means either Gaza and the West Bank will be brought under Israeli control, difficult though that will be, or simply kept in a state of permanent crisis. The latter strategy would deepen existing splits within the Palestinian resistance and with it the suffering of both Israelis and Palestinians in what both sides see now as an existential struggle.

Athens and Sparta. Israel and Iran? The irony of history is that Sparta was ultimately triumphant when backed by the Persian Empire, modern day Iran. The Peloponnesian Wars were thus the first known-world war and marked the end of the Athenian Empire. Israel now seems set on destroying Iran’s empire of despair with profound implications for both the region and the world beyond.  

Julian Lindley-French

 

The Retreat from Strategy

"Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven; that which we are; we are, one equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield".

“Ulysses”, Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Virtue Imperialism

Yesterday, Foreign Secretary David Lammy said Britain would ‘champion’ the fight against climate change and the ‘nature crisis’ because they were more fundamental than the threat from terrorism or “imperialist’ dictators.  Really? There in a nutshell is the problem with Britain’s leaders: the confusion of interests with values, the ridiculous virtue imperialism it generates, and the chronically poor choices British governments make when it comes to the real security and defence of the British people.  

My just published new book, co-written with General Lord Richards is called The Retreat from Strategy (London: Hurst) does not pull its punches about the impact of said retreat on Britain and its hard-pressed armed forces. There has been a profound failure of grand, national and defence strategy at the very heart of the British Establishment for many years, both Parliament and Whitehall. This is because the retreat from strategy is also a retreat from realism caused by London’s reinvention of ‘strategy’, the ways and means to achieve ends, as ultra-liberal politics of the moment.

Guilt, Policy and Strategy

Since the financial and banking crisis of 2008, probably before, London has retreated ever more into a fantasy world of values even at the cost of British vital interests. Worse, the method of British ‘strategy’, such as it is, has seen actual imperialism replaced by a form of guilt-driven value imperialism which is little different from the appallingly self-serving “white man’s burden” of the late nineteenth century.  Indeed, the idea that the rest of the world will follow where Britain leads, be it climate change, migration or a host of other idees du jour is frankly ridiculous. Britain’s grand strategy, the application of still immense British means in pursuit of high strategic ends has thus become little more than performative politics.

London’s appetite for putting values before interests is nowhere clearer than in its dealings with Mauritius over Diego Garcia. Part of the Chagos Islands, Diego Garcia hosts a British-owned, US air base vital to American Indian Ocean strategy. And yet, London wants to hand over Diego Garcia to Mauritius, which is over 1500 miles from Diego Garcia, has never had a legitimate claim on the Chagos Islands, and which is deeply in debt to a China which would love to see the Americans expelled from the air base.

How Much Threat can Britain Afford?

The evidence for the retreat from strategy is plain to see. All recent national security strategies, defence reviews and their associated documents are political rather than strategic documents based on the principle of only recognising as much threat as the Treasury believes Britain can afford. The consequence is equally clear. For a country with the 6^th largest economy in the world and given the threats London itself perceives Britain neither spends enough nor does it spend anywhere well enough on defend to balance the ends, ways, and means of the armed forces.

What geopolitical and defence-strategic role should the Britain of today aspire to? Britain is no longer a global political or military power. Rather, it is a very important European regional-strategic power. Logically, it should focus its defence effort on the Euro-Atlantic community.  Unfortunately, whilst Britain is still an immensely powerful modern state it has no clear strategic anchor or priorities. Defence strategy is reduced to little more than how much threat can virtue afford. Worse, in a world driven by a competition between state and other powerful interests Britain’s retreat further destabilises an already fragile geopolitical system. Putin was clearly encouraged to invade Ukraine by what Moscow perceived to be a lack of both will and power in capitals like London.

Britain’s Defence Pretence

Critically, the British armed forces are unable to meet anything like the roles, missions and tasks government publicly expects of them. The Royal Navy, Army and Royal Air Force might have a little bit of everything, they do not have much of anything. This patent lack of mass, manoeuvre and sustainability or capability at sufficient capacity means they would be simply unable to deal with any of the threats they could face if they are at scale. Even planned increases will only help to back-fill a very hollowed out force, and only if the new Labour Government honours those increases.

Britain cannot stop the world and get off by withdrawing onto its nuclear-armed island and hope for the best. Britain’s history is full of the unexpected and there is no reason to believe such danger is any less remote today or tomorrow. That is the reality of ‘strategy’ that is more about fixing the myriad problems an incompetent London has imposed on the British people than securing Britain and its future. Rather, London has chosen to not only increase the level of risk both the British people and its allies face by retreating from strategy, but it is also imposing an inordinately greater risk on the ill-equipped and under-funded young men and women in uniform it WILL send into harm’s way.  

The core assumption implicit in British strategy is that the Americans will always be there. However, the Americans are becoming increasingly over-stretched globally and for that ‘contract’ to endure Washington will rightly demand the British do more militarily and do it in and around Europe. And yet, the British armed forces continue to be hollowed with the seemingly endless loss of fighting power compounded by the Russo-Ukraine War. Britain is starving its armed forces of vital munitions and training simply to keep Ukraine in the fight but not giving the Ukrainians anything like enough fast enough to ‘win’.  And, even under current planning for the British future force the defence, technological and industrial base needs to be markedly upgraded and expanded.

The Hardest Choice

Here’s the cruncher. Both General Lord Richards and I believe in the independent British nuclear deterrent. Unfortunately, since Cameron and Osborne imposed the cost of the deterrent on the defence budget, one of their many strategically illiterate decisions, Britain has been avoiding the hardest choice of all: London can afford either a credible and safe nuclear deterrent or an appropriately powerful conventional force…but not both.

What to do? Make NATO work. Spend at least 2.5% GDP on defence and plan to spend 3% GDP on defence. Only then, and only possibly, will London for once do what it says it is doing – fund a modern nuclear deterrent and act as one of NATO’s two strategic conventional reserves, but not both. London’s pretence must end and the only way to end it is to return to a strategy in which the ends, ways and means of British power are both credible and in balance. Anything else is little more than the appeasement of a dangerous reality.

Britain and its power still matter. Geopolitics is built on powerful states communicating their vital interests to others to avoid misunderstanding. When a state confuses interests with values it causes confusion because said state becomes unpredictable. The reason for such confusion is not enough of the London High Establishment believe in Britain as a power any longer.

As the book says, “There is little understanding at the apex of power in London about the utility of soft and hard power, and its considered application in an increasingly unsafe world. Strategy has become politics by another name and thus little more than strategic pretence – the short-term dressed up as the long-term, the irrelevant offered as the substantive, and the management of irreversible decline.  Not only is Britain’s ‘managed decline’ being very poorly managed, but Britain is not in fact declining”.  It is just very poorly led, Mr Lammy.

Julian Lindley-French

 

 

 

 

Starmer the Disarmer?

 

The Retreat from Strategy (London: Hurst) Published September 2024

“We live in a time when intelligent people are being silenced so that stupid people won’t be offended”.

NOT Fyodor Dostoevsky

August 16^th. Oh dear, it seems Britain has been foisted with yet another government that said one thing to get elected and is doing very different things in power.  Pat McFadden, a key Labour figure even went as far as telling the British people Labour would always be honest.  Really, Pat? In a week that the war in Eastern Europe took a new and dangerous turn as Ukraine invaded Russia the new British Government leaked that the critical funding for defence science, technology, and research will be slashed by 20% and millions of defence critical pounds. 

I had hoped that Prime Minister Starmer would do the right thing by that ultimate public service, defence, by upholding the Tory commitment to spend at least 2.5% GDP by 2030.  At the NATO Washington Summit in June Starmer talked about "The generational threat of Russia… aided by the likes of North Korea and Iran. Conflicts rage across the Middle East and North Africa. The challenge of China. Terrorism."  His new Secretary of State for Defence, John Healey, went further, “It is right. Threats are growing across the world but here in Europe we have war for the first time for decades. We have a decade of growing aggression from Russia and defence and security must be and will be at the heart of this new government." Well, it is not.

The cuts are all part of the pretence that Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves can close a £22 billion ‘black hole’ in public finances she claimed she was unaware of until she entered office.  Nonsense!  As shadow Chancellor Reeves had access to all the necessary financial data from the Office of Budget Responsibility. What makes this decision more concerning is that Starmer had said that he would increase defence expenditure to 2.5% ‘when economic conditions allow’.  Well, it was announced this week that the British economy grew by 0.6% in the last quarter faster than any other G7 country.  So, when exactly will ‘economic conditions allow’?  The answer? Probably never. Rather, Starmer is engaging in a form of appeasement, the worst kind of ‘stop the world I want to get off’ politics.  Democracies do not get to choose the threats they must confront.

By contrast, striking train drivers who already earn a minimum of £60,000 per annum and enjoy 1960s work practices to boot will receive a 15% increase to their already bloated pay packets for their ‘service’ and all paid for by the taxpayer.  According to Reeves these are ‘affordable’ pay increases for Labour’s friends and far, far more than any rank-and-file British soldier, sailor, or airman can ever dream of earning for their real public service. 

Defence modernisation IS defence.  It is also critical to the strategic messages the new British government MUST send to allies and adversaries alike.  Armed forces must be continually and above all consistently modernised otherwise they might as well be scrapped. Maintaining the peace in a dangerous world depends on credible deterrence and defence, which means convincing the likes of Putin, Xi and other autocrats that Britain’s armed forces are fit for the threat they pose, and that London is willing to pull its defence-strategic weight within the NATO alliance. It is also about convincing the Americans that Britain is a credible ally, and that NATO is worth the American effort. Cutting defence modernisation does precisely the opposite. Trump?

Several future critical defence programmes and all the high-skilled jobs involved are now under threat.  These include the Minerva military intelligence satellite programme, and the Tempest Future Combat Air System Britain is developing with Italy and Japan.  Cut those programmes and allies will draw the clear conclusion that Britain can no longer be trusted as a defence industrial partner.   It is also interesting that the public funding deficit Reeves seeks to close is about the same as the deficit in the MoD’s Equipment Plan which is believed to be also close to £20 billion. MoD spending is a mess and needs vital reform but the problem at source is the gap between the kit the Armed Forces need to do the job the government imposes on them and said government’s willingness to pay for it. The mess that is the MoD will not be resolved by cutting this vital budget or micro-managing projects as is proposed.

My only source of comfort in yet another unfolding British defence funding fiasco is that Lord Robertson is leading the Strategic Defence Review.  Robertson is someone I hold in the highest regard as he comes from the same Labour tradition as I do – solid, patriotic, aspirational and pragmatic.  He is also a former NATO Secretary-General, and I find it hard to believe he would lead yet another anything-but-strategic ‘how much threat can we afford’ review. He will have his work cut as Sir Keir Starmer’s priorities are now clear: NATO and defending Britain (or anyone else for that matter) are not among them.

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, it is the unspeakable in receipt of the indefensible encouraging the dangerously unpredictable at the expense of Britain’s now undefendable.  Starmer the disarmer?

Julian Lindley-French