Solidarity: On the Front Line of Freedom's Defence

Wroclaw, Poland.  11 June.  US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is right. "In the past, I've worried about NATO turning into a two-tiered alliance.  Between members who specialize in 'soft' humanitarian, development, peacekeeping, and talking tasks, and those conducting the 'hard' combat missions.  Between those willing and able to pay the price and bear the burdens of alliance commitments, and those who enjoy the benefits of NATO membership - be they security guarantees or headquarters billets - but don't want to share the risks and costs.  This is no longer a hypothetical worry.  We are there today.  And it is unacceptable".

Here in Poland, for so long on the front line of freedom's defence, where Solidarity was born to defend it, I have just emerged from a session during which Senator John McCain spoke eloquently of the 'power' of Secretary Gate's remarks.  Senator McCain reminded Europeans of the warning from history that is Poland's past.

Last night I attended the Freedom Awards dinner of the Atlantic Council of the United States and its partner the beautiful City of Wroclaw.  Wroclaw is a city which is occasionally potmarked by a violent history, themselves eloquent testimony to a struggle for freedom for which millions of Europeans died.     

It was a great privilege simply to be there. It was a dinner from which this old Cold War worrier came away with a simple life belief restored.  For freedom to be maintained it must be believed in and if necessary fought for.  Ask the people of Egypt, on whose behalf Esran Abdel Fatah was honoured.  Ask the people of Belarus, on whose behalf Ales Byalyatski was honoured.  Ask the people of Poland, on whose behalf Helena Lucyzwo and Adam Michnik were honoured. People who are either fighting for freedom or fought for it.  And, of course, ask the people Libya, Syria, Tunisia and many others.

Secretary Gates is of course right. This is all very 1930-ish - we talk about freedom even as we retreat from its defence.  Freedom will only flower if North Americans and Europeans together tend the lighthouse of hope so many millions want to believe in.  We must therefore face together the world as it is, for it is far too soon to believe the world is as we would like it.

That means a strong West.  But 'strength'  must include in its inventory legitimate armed forces credible and able to act in the world of today and tomorrow, not the past.  'Soft' power is all well and good but all the lessons of the past and the present suggest that without the firm foundation of hard power Utopia will eventually fall.

Frankly, too often the 'strategies' I read to justify the squalid nature of Europe's retreat reveal the lie that is Europe's contibution to defending freedom.  Indeed, in the visionless world of Europe today we only recognise only as much threat as we can afford.  It is thus a short step back to Munich and Neville Chamberlain's grovel that he was unwilling to defend the freedom of a small country far away about which he knew nothing.  The rest is barbarous history.

There is one small country over which freedom is not only being defended, but supported.  Sadly, only eight NATO nations are doing it; with the rest shuffling their collective feet in the shameless defiance of solidarity.  Freedom and solidarity go hand in hand.  Sadly, there is a sub-text in Secretary Gates speech which I see here at this impressive conference.  Too many Europeans either take feedom for granted or simply do not believe in preparing for its defence.

The consequence? A very real danger now exists that in the face of coming challenges European democracies will simply lack the means to defend freedom, even if they want to.  1939 all over again.

The bottom-line is this; no Alliance nor Union can survive both a lack of solidarity and capability over time.  If we collectively fail to lift our heads from the defeatism and short-termism, from the rejection of freedom's projection that is Europe's lot today, the twenty-first century will be every bit as dangerous as the twentieth.

We are still all of us on the front-line of freedom's defence.  If you do not believe me come to Wroclaw.

Julian Lindley-French

Being Right Better in Brussels and London

9 June. London. Big day. Big issues.

In the morning I gave an interview about NATO and Libya to the BBC’s main morning radio news programme – “The Today Programme”. It was strange being back in a studio I used to attend fairly regularly in the 1990s as a ‘Presenter’s Friend’, a turn to expert on security matters. I am older now, not sure wiser. You can be the judge of that.

The issue at hand was the NATO Defence Ministers meeting in Brussels and what is likely to come out of it. Regular readers will know of my concern about NATO’s Operation Unified Protector. However, before I spoke I listened to a desperate plea from Misrata for NATO’s continued support. It was heart-warming to know that we (and by ‘we’ I mean the democratic West) are on the right side of history in our support of the Libyan people. I just wish NATO would be right better at it.

The figures are nevertheless impressive. NATO aircraft have now flown some 9500 sorties and some 4000 strike sorties to enforce the No Fly Zone. Countries about which I have been traditionally rude, such as Belgium, are for once pulling their weight. Critically, so are a few Arab countries – Jordan, United Arab Emirates and Qatar. There really is no love for Gadhaffi amongst the Arabs.

We may also be approaching a tipping point. Although I need to issue a health warning here; the ‘infallibility’ of the Lindley-French prediction model normally at this point falls flat on its face. The arms embargo has effectively prevented any munitions reaching the Tripoli regime. The introduction of British and French attack helicopters (few though they are) has further restricted the movement of regime forces and there are encouraging signs that the Libyan Army leadership are beginning to consider a Gadhaffi-less ceasefire, which is after all what this is now about. People have to stop dying as soon as possible.

In Brussels some form of solidarity has been crafted from the rubble of national caveats and restrictions over the use of force and the NATO Defence Ministers will agree to extend the mission for another ninety days.

Two things now need to be carefully considered – how we support the Libyan people in establishing an enduring ceasefire, and how we support them in crafting a peaceful political transition.

To that end, three conditions must first be met for a ceasefire: all attacks on civilians must cease; all regime forces must verifiably withdraw to bases, including the very nasty paramilitaries; and full access should be guaranteed for humanitarian relief.

Critically, the political transition will require the Libyan people and their regional partners front and centre. First, any intervention to guarantee the peace must be asked for by the Libyan people. Second, the Arab League and the African Union must be in the lead. Third, all actions must be UN-mandated. That will ensure ‘we’ continue to be right.

Gadhaffi’s personal future? Ultimately that is up to the Libyan people to decide, not us.

And then I went to the British Parliament. I had been summoned to give evidence to the House of Commons Defence Committee on the UK’s National Security Strategy and the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR). My central contention was blunt; both ‘strategies’ describe a very big world getting bigger and more complex by the day and then promptly make Britain smaller and weaker.

At the military level the Strategic Pretence and Impecunity Review (and the new ‘SDSR2’ which is currently being conducted) will damage Britain’s standing in the world for the foreseeable future and impose upon Britain and its armed forces a much greater level of risk than the British people (and their American allies) have a right to expect. Forget the promise by the Government to reinvest in the armed forces from 2015. From what I am hearing that is not going to happen.

The official line is that Britain’s retreat, for that is what it is, is simply a function of being broke. That would not be unreasonable with the national debt 60% the size of the economy, even if the solution seems to be to disarm the baby and then throw the baby, the bath-tub and the bathroom out of the window. Of particular concern is a conversation I had over tea (what else?) with a senior official whom I very much like and admire very, who had a hand in drafting the SDSR and with whom I profoundly disagree.

His argument was that taken together the NSS and SDSR are not temporary adjustments to cope solely with being broke. Rather, it is a structural change to lessen the reliance of British governments on the armed forces as a tool of strategic influence and shift the balance of effort and investment to other tools such as aid and development and diplomacy. In principle that is a perfectly defensible position, even if it does smack of strategic political correctness.

There is a genuine dilemma. For many years the understandable fixation with Al Qaeda and terrorism has masked the nature and pace of strategic change. Moreover, the threat to British values and security from hyper-immigration has undoubtedly forced British governments to switch resources from projection to protection.

However, when I look at this world of ours as I do and see the nature of dangerous change driven as it is by hyper-competition between democracies and non-democracies I see all the conditions for the kind of instability that needs western democracies to have credible and capable armed forces. ‘Credibility’ and ‘capability’ are defined not by navel-gazing but by properly understanding what is out there and what is likely to be out there. As President Obama said in London if ‘we’ do not play an active role for the better in such a world then who will?

Sadly, if the strategically correct are permitted to hijack and undermine Britain’s security and defence policy all they will succeed in doing is destroying our credibility internationally, our alliances and the very international institutions that are central to Britain’s influence.

And, in the end? Some poor bloody infantryman from Sheffield will find himself in a foxhole under fire armed only with a UN-mandated plastic bottle and a broken elastic band. That is what is at stake if this folly continues.

I just wish London would for once be right…and be better.

Julian Lindley-French

D-Day: The High Water Mark of Anglo-American Defence Relations?

D-Day. June 6. London. Good news - it is raining.  Good to see the natural order restored.  Back in 1944 Americans, Britons and Canadians were struggling ashore onto Norman beaches under heavy fire to rid Europe of the Nazis.  On this day of days it is right and proper to look back and remember and in that light consider Anglo-American defence relations today.

For me this is an especially poignant moment as my grandfather was there and this week I have been called to give evidence to the British Parliament on Britain’s future defence strategy, or what is left of it! The word on the street in Washington is that Britain is seen as an increasingly unreliable ally, abandoning the four principles of alliance upon which D-Day was launched – strategy, influence, competence and commitment.  Was D-Day the high water mark of Anglo-American defence relations?

First, let me de-mythologise the relationship that existed back in 1944.  The US routinely demonstrated frustration bordering on a lack of respect for the 'ponderous' British.  That was unfair.  D-Day and the subsequent battle for Normandy are cases in point. Of the 156,000 allied troops landed on D-Day, only 57,500 were American, with the rest being mainly British and Canadian, with the bulk British.  British General Montgomery (Monty), so often derided by American historians, was the architect of D-Day, which worked like clockwork on the two British and one Canadian beach.

It was the British and Canadians who took on and defeated the cream of the German 7th Army, particularly the Panzer Lehr and Hitler Jugend SS divisions.  This enabled the Americans to eventually break out of much more lightly-defended parts of Normandy. Montgomery said the Allies would reach the River Seine on D plus 90. That objective was achieved on D plus 81.

Furthermore. the British advance from Normandy to Antwerp was the fastest advance in military history until the American advance on Baghdad in 2003. Even Operation Market Garden, the attempt to get over the Rhine at Arnhem bridge in  September 1944, and widely regarded as ‘Monty’s’ folly, could have worked if US Airborne had taken intact the bridge over the River Maas at Grave. Their failure held up the British XXX Corps for a critical thirty-six hours.

But what of today? The evidence of the past decade would suggest the high-water mark may indeed have been reached.  Britain was an effective junior partner during the re-taking of Kuwait in 1991 and the performance of the British armed forces during the 2003 Iraq War was solid, if not spectacular.  However, in Afghanistan the British Army has come close to being broken, trying to follow American strategy on British resources over a long time and at great distance from a politically uncertain home base. 

And yet, the British are still there and in force in Afghanistan, with some ten thousand troops deployed unconstrained by the absurd caveats and rules of non-engagement of other Europeans.  Equally, Britain took the lead wth France to uphold UN Security Council Resolution 1973 in Libya, an operation which has just entered a new and dangerous phase with the deployment of British Army attack helicopters.

So, why is Washington sniping (at least the ever-shrinking bit that cares about Britain)?  There are three main concerns which have been apparent since London launched the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) back in late 2010 and which are growing in intensity. First, Britain’s ability to work effectively with the US is being rapidly eroded. Second, Britain’s ability to influence and lead European and other allies and partners is being dangerously undermined. Third, Prime Minister Cameron is retreating ever further into strategic and defence ‘spin’.  

Current actions are particularly exercising the Americans. First, Defence Secretary Fox seems to be re-visiting the SDSR by carrying out a further review to 'match' defence planning assumptions to funding. It is little more than yet another thinly-disguised Treasury-driven attempt to force armed forces at war to squeeze a further £1 billion of cuts above and beyond the savage cuts announced in the SDSR.  The SDSR abandoned any pretence at ‘strategy’, this review is in danger of burying it. 

Second, the British seem unsure as to the effect of policy.  The Government aims to cut some £38 billion ($62.4 billion) of unfunded commitments inherited from its Labour predecessor, mainly in the procurement and acquisition of defence equipment. Not an unreasonable goal the Government thought it had successfully found at least £19 billion ($31.2 billion) of savings by 2015. However, my sources in Washington tell me that a further £9 billion ($14.8 billion) of over-spend has now been uncovered and that the real figure is back up to £28 billion ($46 billion). Any pretence to competence is being rapidly abandoned.

Third, the British are behaving badly.  Prime Minister Cameron is ‘punishing’ the Americans for not supporting him more aggressively over Libya. Specifically, he is refusing to permit the British Army to replace the successful US Marine Corps mission in the upper Gereskh valley, which ends in October. This is in spite of military advice that the British Army is up for the mission and can do the job. As a consequences the Taliban will re-infiltrate an area of critical strategic significance close to the main Helmand province base at Lashkar Gah. Such a failure could torpedo any hopes of handing authority over to the Afghans as part of the transition.  Any pretence to commitment is in danger of being abandoned.

This is not the first time Prime Minister Cameron has behaved in such a dangerously churlish manner. He scrapped the brand new MRA4 spy aircraft, to teach a ‘lesson’ to BAe Systems, a defence contractor. How we British could have done with such eyes and ears over Libya today.  The Prime Minister is also micro-managing the Libyan campaign, issuing so-called ‘red cards’ to stop attacks on targets the military regard as essential. As for the famous attack helicopters, much of it is 'spin'.  The British can only deploy four, the French fourteen.  The Americans?  They are quietly having to divert their own over-used and over-stretched strategic eyes and ears to support the British and the French. No wonder the Yanks call the Brits the ‘Borrowers’.  Just wait until Congress finds out!

In this light D-Day does indeed seem a very, very long time ago and the Americans have a point. Both the Americans and the British armed forces deserve better.  Too often they are forced to make up for London's strategic contradictions, its lack of vision, the strategy and policy mistakes, as well as the endless prevarications of an increasingly surreal Whitehall village.

With the gap between stated ambition and available forces now yawning London is snatching contempt from the jaws of American respect. Strategy, influence, competence and commitment underpinned D-Day. The four principles still inform an Anglo-American defence relationship which the British still regard as vital to both national and defence strategy.  

If London is serious (a big 'if) it is time for to wake up and smell the coffee...as the Americans would say.

Julian Lindley-French

"Everyone Needs a Dragon Slayer"

“A thousand hearts are great within my bosom; Advance our standards, set upon our foes; Our ancient word of courage, fair Saint George, inspire us with the spleen of fiery dragons! Upon them! victory sits on our helms”. Richard III, William Shakespeare.

Krakow, Poland. What role does national myth play in forging national identity and cohesion? Here in this beautiful country of Poland it is a question that seems particularly apposite. Poland is a country that through the centuries has had to sustain its identity in spite of many attempts to wipe the country from the face of Europe. But, where does one draw the line on national myth? What happens when myth evaporates? My visit to Auschwitz was eloquent testimony of what happens when myth through strategy and policy becomes industrialised. Hitler, Mussolini, Mladic – these people represent the danger that can emerge from unbridled, industrial myth.

One could argue that Europe’s violent past is itself the result of a myriad of myth-makers. Myth fits neatly into the ancient tradition of European story-telling.  And yet myth clearly has a role to play. My own sorry country Britain is a sad example. Now denied its myths by the Komissars of political correctness, drowning in a sea of meaningless multiculturalism, St George has been slain not by the now protected dragon, but by the health and safety laws of a state that has become over-mighty. 

It was my old friend, Hans Binnendijk of the National Defense University in Washington, who gave me this phrase which crowns this blog.  It is powerfully convincing. Americans of course have their own myth; purveyors of the American dream, a nation recast from nations, the shining city on the moral upland of rectitude looking down upon the rest of us dwelling in servitude amongst dark, satanic mills from which narrow calculation is ground out. And, of course, the one in which the Americans turn up late and then 'win' World Wars One and Two.  America's hollywood myth has almost written we Brits out of history.  Hey ho.

But there is a point to myth.  Take America indeed.  We all need America to believe itself that America is an idea, rather than a power. When America simply becomes another power, as it did during the last decade or so, the West lost much of its moral compass and with it much of its political authority.  The European Union is trying to cast itself in a similar mould, but Europeans do not sit comfortably on top of shining hills.  European myth requires that someone always has to win and someone always has to lose. Sad, really.

Here in Poland myth is alive and well. Do not get me wrong. This amazing, modernizing country is testament to human spirit, faith, myth, NATO, European Union but above all Poles. Indeed, standing in the centre of beautiful Krakow I felt ashamed of the fast-fooded, fading, filthy centres of most British cities. The beauty of central Krakow is a myth in itself and speaks of centuries of defiance of a people gang raped repeatedly by history, most recently by Nazi and Soviet alike. Remember, the liberation of Europe from Soviet occupation began here in Poland.

Indeed, it is that heady mix of faith, myth and modernity that makes Poland.  There are warnings.  I saw several gangs of skin-headed youths that looked dangerously aggressive and seemingly fed by a more unattractive form of Polish national myth.  I also saw the contrasts of Poland as I drove out to Auschwitz.  Smart Polish Catholics on the way to church weaving to avoid drunks...at 10am.  Poland has come a very long way, but still has a ways to go. 

My hosts took me on a tour of the amazing Wieliczka salt mine. Some three hundred kilometers of tunnels, diving some nine-hundred metres deep, taking some seven hundred years to carve out. And, what carvings! Here Polish faith, myth and modernity are represented by salt carvings that range from cathedrals to monuments to myth in huge chambers that leave one speechless and breathless.

In a sense this mine is itself a metaphor for national myth. Bring myth too fast and too abruptly to the surface and it can break the delicate social and political balance upon which all societies are built – ancient, modern and post-modern. Why? Because national myth in Europe (and for much of the world beyond) is not like America's myth in which everyone is meant to win.  In Europe most ‘dragons’ are metaphors for the slaying of enemies, and historically in Europe most enemies live next door. That was the tragedy of the Balkans where myth became fact and fact became murder.

Rather, keep it safe, discreet, carved in some underground gallery of shared awareness so that we can from time to time we can remind ourselves of who we were and maybe, just maybe, who we are.  

Yes, everyone does indeed need a dragon-slayer, but keep him in the closet.

St George, England, today? My money’s on the dragon.

Julian Lindley-French

Auschwitz

Today, I walked in Auschwitz – Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II Birkenau., Today I walked before the walls of Elysium, the final resting place of the heroic and virtuous. Today, I paid my respects to people, not numbers. Three of whom spoke to me – Anne Kraus, Hana Weisenkind and Berta Eppinghausen. They spoke to me not because they are different from any of the other victims of this Megiddo of industrial murder, but because their empty, pathetic suitcases spoke for them; their emptiness beyond words.

This Auschwitz is a place in which evil hides in peace and in which evil is and must be defined. I walked in silence, in utter humility, in anger, in repentance, and in shame. I walked in the footsteps of honoured ghosts; honouring with each free step I took, each condemned step I followed on the short but long road of death. 1.1 million Annes, Hanas and Bertas were murdered in this place. In Auschwitz each and every victim of the Holocaust - the Shoah - was before me, too numerous for me to comprehend, only feel, only sense. Less than a single lifespan ago ordinary Europeans were torn from the fabric of community and butchered in this place, this Auschwitz.

As I walked I thought of my Jewish friends, Scott and Neil and a host of others, spared the ovens by the serendipity of timing, but still burning with the heat of fires lit and fed by endemic evil, hysterical hate and criminal deed. In Block 11, the ‘Death Block’, my head became bowed, my heart heavy and I did not know if I would vomit or cry. Today, I was in sheol, a grave with no bodies, only soulful, sad, material remains of people still denied the dignity of identity. I came to honour them and I leave more troubled than this seasoned man of history could possibly have imagined. Oxford letters here count for nothing. In this place a people almost died here; a people triumphed here. Nothing has ever defined a present as eloquently as this recently suffered past.

I was troubled for the past, but also for the present and the future. I watched Prime Minister Binjamin Netanyahu in Washington and like many Europeans felt that tinge of regret, guilt, frustration that makes me both ambivalent to Israeli policy towards the Palestinians and conscious of an historic duty to support Israel whatever. Indeed, coming here, to this place at this time, my utter commitment to Israel’s right to exist was re-cast, re-forged. No-one today can expect Israel to take risks none of us would take, this place put paid to that. Whatever presidents may say a return to Israel’s 1967 borders is not going to happen until Israel’s security is assured. Here in Poland President Obama yesterday told an old Jewish woman that the US would never abandon Israel. Come to this place.

As I walked I also thought of my Arab friends, of Lena and my recent dinner with Lakhtar Brahimi, one of my heroes. And even in the heart of evil I am sure Israel’s security will never be assured when so many Palestinians seethe with their own sense of injustice. As I walked I was clear-headed enough to know that the past must in time be denied the hunger it has to consume the future. Without a two-state solution that guarantees the security and well-being of Israeli and Palestinian alike there can be no peace in the Middle East, nor I doubt in Europe and beyond.

The respective political currencies of both America and Europe are fatally devalued by the belief of both Israelis and Palestinians that such currency is arbitrary and prejudiced. This place casts a shadow over all. America rightly claims special rights because it was and is the great protector of the Jewish people and Jewish state because of this place. And yet well-intentioned, patient America is perceived by millions of Arabs to be Israel’s advocate. The foundations of the fallen twin towers were first undermined not on the American side of the Atlantic, but on this side. Europe? Auschwitz – this giant maggot of history eats into all of us and taints us by association. The past may indeed be another country, but not here, not in this place. For Israelis we Europeans always favour the ‘other side’, even when we do not.

I walked along the road of death, alongside the final platform where those about to die were separated from those soon to die. From afar I witnessed the hollowed carcass of the peace process descend the long spiral staircase of hopelessness and fear that now spans its own lifetime and which stops this place from ever being in the past..

There are no certainties in this place – then or now.  But, looking beyond the killing wire I saw an Israel no more able to escape this place, than the space that pretends to be Palestine. That is the nature of this place.

The new Egypt’s decision to open its border with Gaza heralds a new cycle of change in the Middle East. And yet finally that change need not be defined by this place. A glimmer of an opportunity can be fleetingly glimpsed fluttering in and out of grasp if we all have the vision to grasp it. The Arab Spring is driven not by Islamic medievalists, but by an aspiration for a freedom and liberty only Israelis enjoy in the Middle East. After much European encouragement Fatah and Hamas are beginning the long road to a unity that might in time bring sense to the leaders of Hamas. And, in so doing deny Iran its dangerous mischief. Can this place also be denied?

Beyond the killing wire I could also see a Europe finally ready to join with America to ease Israel’s legitimate fears for its security and offer hope to Palestinians that their statehood is more than a diplomat’s promise. A Europe that stops talking too much of a future defined by this past and which is finally able to live beyond this place and its shadow of death. There in the distance I could see a Europe that took the evil that drapes this place from its own shoulders and seized the chance to redeem itself from the ashes upon which this place stands.

From the depths of the depravity that reeks from every corner and crevice vision is still offered to us by Anne, Hanna and Berta. It is of an America and Europe standing together with Israelis and Palestinians. Genuine, responsible and supportive partners in search of a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians, both of whom suffered at the hands of Europe.

A price must be paid. That is the nature of this place. For the spell cast by this place to be begun to be broken real political risk must be taken. For this place vision alone is not enough for it existed and exists to destroy hope. Walking here today I was and am convinced that only if we Europeans actively become a real part of a meaningful peace (there can be no final solutions here) can we atone for this place. Simply throwing large amounts of money can never ease the pain of this place.

Therefore, seventy years on from the commencement of industrial murder a new commitment must emerge from this place to a peace agreement, interim, final or whatever. And, if needs be, the commitment to send a European force, under UN mandate, to assure the confidence such a bold step will demand. Such a force would need to be there at the behest of Israelis and Palestinians, and act on their behalf.

Only such a brave step would honour Anne, Hana and Berta. And, begin to ease the suffering, fear and anger of Arab and Jew alike, which is so easily exploited by the new men of hate who perpetrate the hopelessness of this place. Our resolve will be tested as will the force, and doubtless losses will be taken. And, of course deep fissures will remain – such as the future of settlers and the status of East Jerusalem.

But, there can be no more running away; we would simply be running straight back...to this place.

“For ever let there be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity”, read the stone. Today, I walked in Auschwitz; and Auschwitz spoke to me.

Julian Lindley-French

The Balkans 2011: A Road Not Travelled?

“Somewhere ages and ages hence: two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less travelled by and that has made all the difference”. So wrote American poet Robert Frost a century ago. He could have been speaking of my Balkan experience. Has a corner been turned?

Ratko Mladic has been arrested. Or, to put it more accurately the Serbian authorities have decided to detain the 'General' at a politically apposite moment having known his whereabouts for many years. Nothing is ever what it seems in the Balkans, and neither is this. That said, President Boris Tadic is to be commended for facing down Serbia’s powerful nationalists for whom Mladic and all his genocidal doings still resonate with the clarion call of dark heroism. Ultimately, little Greater Serbia has lost out to Big Serbia and its bid to join the EU. A clearer example of the benefits of Union there is none – for all its many Byzantine failings.

Will the arrest of Mladic finally mark the true end of the Wars of the Yugoslav Succession? Probably not, but the Mladic detention does at least provide an opportunity to move just a step further on a long road to true peace. It also provides a moment of reflection for all engaged in a war that tragically defined a post Cold War decade that should have been joyous.

Recently I was driven by a young Bosnian-Serb diplomat from Sarajevo Airport to Pale, the political heart of Serb Bosnia where Karadzic and Mladic held court. To be precise (something of a rarity in the Balkans) he was a Bosnia-Herzegovian diplomat of Serb extraction, which goes to the very heart of a continuing problem. I am not going to reveal what he said because he was genuine in his desire to see all communities come together and impressive in his grasp of past and present and I have no wish to get him into trouble. He is very much a man of and for the future of a truly European Balkans.

Nor was it the first time I have travelled that road. I go to Sarajevo two or three times a year and have done for many years. Often, I go the other way to Camp Butmir home of the EU force guaranteeing peace. You do not see much of them, but in conversations with Bosnians of Bosniak, Croat and/or Serb extraction the message is always the same; their presence is vital. Tensions remain very close to the surface of a fractured society held together as much by EU aid and American commitment as political reconciliation. Everyone is a victim in the Balkans; noone ever an aggressor.

Nevertheless, progress has been made. When I first started to lecture to Bosnian officers they wore the uniforms of their violent, sectarian past and proudly so. I was present the day a common uniform was issued. It was the source of much hilarity and triggered jibes similar, albeit more pointed, than one might hear between English and the Scots. Sectarianism is not a local phenomenon.

The television picture last night recalled that dark past in which two hundred thousand died. These are images that cannot be dissolved by antiseptic edict. The pictures showed a T-74 Serb tank pounding the centre of Sarajevo. It was the road I had just travelled.

Each year the bullet strikes on buildings lessen and the shell holes I recall have now gone, but not the scars. What strikes any visitor to Sarajevo is the beauty, the intimacy and the tragedy of the place. So tight is the valley, so dominant Mount Igman, that there can be no hiding place in Sarajevo – physically or politically. The city has sat at the tectonic epicentre of European politics since the days of the Ottoman Empire. There was certainly no hiding place from my road, below which Sarajevo cowered in injured remembrance. As we drove on the road turned north and east and began to climb away from Sarajevo through yet another soaring mountain valley.. After fifteen kilometres we passed a sign – Welcome to Republika Srpska. It was 2010.

History, of course, laughs at us with subtle irony. It is circular because we make it so. If Mladic is well enough (a big ‘if’) he will be transferred to The Hague to stand trial. Mladic established his enduring infamy in 1995 for the massacre of eight thousand Bosnian Muslims, at the tragically ill-named UN ‘Safe Haven’ of Srebrenica. The most exposed of several such havens the place was defended by the lightly-armed Dutch troops of Dutchbat.

Mladic humiliated them and for many years Srebrenica has been synonymous with the failure of the Dutch Army to protect civilians under their care. In fact, the Dutch were hung out to dry by an international community that had done everything it could to avoid confronting the tragic reality of a brutal war amongst the people. The UN was utterly divided both politically and morally about how and if to use force, the European Union, having declared this to be the ‘hour of Europe’, failed cataclysmically and the United States at the time was ‘not cleaning windows’, as one rather myopic American put it. Dutchbat had no chance and honourable men were made to pay for the utter failure of political masters and UN apparatchiks across the West and beyond.

Paralysed by a dispute over the precise meaning of a UN Security Council resolution and to what extent under international ‘law’ civilian populations could be protected by force, the politicians buck-passed and the diplomats fiddled as the hills around Srebrenica became charnel.

“And both that morning equally lay; in leaves no step had trodden black; Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way; I doubted if I should ever come back”.

I have travelled that road and it now leads towards Libya.

Julian Lindley-French

Thank You and Goodnight, Mr President

President Obama has done Britain and Europe a huge favour. By recasting the ‘special’ relationship as an essential relationship the President has released London from the shackles of an increasingly hollow ‘specialness’. London must now seize this moment to re-balance Britain’s foreign and security policy so that British influence can be re-established where it matters for America – in Europe and with key members of a resurgent Commonwealth. President Obama is inviting Britain to become a better ally and Britain must meet that challenge. The ‘special’ relationship has now come full circle and the President has placed it graciously in the oak cask of history where it belongs.

Britain’s relationship with America is essential and will endure. There is and will remain a special place for the British in the American mind. However, that place must not become a museum. The special relationship began formally seventy years ago with the August 1941 signing of the Atlantic Charter. However, the political roots for the relationship were established not by power-brokers and statesmen, but by an American journalist – Ed Murrow.

On 22 September, 1940 Murrow began his ‘London rooftops’ broadcasts to the American people, enduring the worst of the Blitz to tell a pacifist American people of Britain’s defiance of Nazi Germany. Gradually the broadcasts generated a groundswell of popular and political support for Britain’s struggle. That in turn created the political space in Washington for President Roosevelt to prepare America for the coming struggle between might and right.

The special relationship was always a leadsership relationship.  As such it blossomed from the vital anti-Nazi alliance into critical transatlantic solidarity between democratic North American and democratic Europe in the struggle against Soviet communism. From the very beginning the special relationship was unique; a political relationship underpinned by genuine affection that in spite of the many nay-sayers continues to this day.

However, that was then and this is now. In 1940 Britain was still a global power, with the world’s most powerful navy and probably the most advanced air force (certainly air defence). A quarter of the world’s population was headed by the King Emperor, George VI. In other words the ‘special’ relationship was essentially between political equals – even if one was coming and the other going. Today, the contrast in fortunes could not be greater.

The twenty-first century will still be the American century for all the contortions of the pessimists, including an increasingly wrong Henry Kissinger (it is never good to see one’s heroes fall to Earth). Americans and Britons routinely exaggerate the strengths of others and the weakness of self. Britain will still be an essential partner of the United States, but simply lacks the clout to be THE exclusive special partner of the United States. American grand strategy (the organisation of immense means in pursuit of global ends) cannot afford to maintain such an illusion any longer. Today, America remains the challenged but indispensable power, whilst Britain is much diminished, albeit far less diminished than is currently fashionable in fashionable London. Britain stands alongside France as a great power. Britain is neither an Italy, nor indeed a Germany, and hopefully never will be a Belgium.

Ultimately, for the all the genuineness of the relationship between two countries that have done more to shape a positive world than any two others in history, relative power and influence are at the core of the link - both economic and military. Power that is underpinned by an idea – the new West. That was the essence of Ed Murrow’s broadcasts from London. Britain was not just another old European power fighting for power, but family standing for values. As George VI said in his famous King’s Speech, on the outbreak of war on 3 September, 1939, “We have been forced into a conflict, for we are called, with our allies, to meet the challenge of a principle which, if it were to prevail, would be fatal to any civilized order in the world”. The same could be said of the struggle against the new extremism during which America and Britain have again stood shoulder to shoulder and paid a heavy price in blood and geld.

New, more systemic challenges to the West will come – both North America and Europe.  And, America needs a new ‘special’ partner and for all its failings that partner must in time be Europe as a whole. Britain has therefore a critical role to play with France in preparing Europe for the new Special Relationship relevant to the twenty-first century, rather than a relic of the twentieth. After all, that is what America and Britain fought for.

To such an end Britain must first start to live up to its potential in the world and put aside the obsession with decline which is doing so much to reduce essential British influence in those parts America cannot reach. Second, Britain must forge a new partnership with France to properly renovate the European pillar of a new transatlantic relationship. Third, the relationship must be properly cast in a global context.  Whilst the two pillars will look outwards rather than inwards all-important solidarity must be seen to be preserved.  The US will be necessarily focussed on Asia-Pacific whilst Europe must get its act together in North Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Britain’s Europeaness must therefore become an asset not a liability. Fourth, the enduring military to military special relationship must set an agenda to properly prepare NATO for the twenty-first century. Fifth, Britain and France must use their collective influence to forge a direct EU-US special relationship that can reinforce the security of the respective homelands (as opposed to purely defence-related matters), particularly as it relates to counter-terrorism and counter-crime.

Above all, Britain must re-discover the global ambition to foster the Commonwealth into a new security partnership.  The West is an idea rather than a place and such groupings are firmly anchored in the idea for which America and Britain fought . It is an idea that is as compelling and attractive today as it was in the dark days of disaster in 1940 and 1941. The Empire may have indeed become a Commonwealth and Britain but one equal member of it, but as a vehicle for stabilising influence the Commonwealth can play a vital role. Several of the emergent states are committed members.

Murrow once said; “A reporter is always concerned with tomorrow. There's nothing tangible of yesterday. All I can say I've done is agitate the air ten or fifteen minutes and then boom - it's gone”. Characteristically modest as ever, Murrow may well have been talking of contemporary British politics and politicians. That must end. It is time therefore for Britain to look to the future of an Essential Relationship, America certainly is.

Thank you and goodnight, Mr President.

Julian Lindley-French