hms iron duke

hms iron duke

Monday 22 August 2011

Libya: Implementing the Peace


“A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!”  Richard III by William Shakespeare

Alphen, The Netherlands, 22 August. Funny how history plays games. On this day in England in 1485 King Richard III lost the battle of Bosworth Field to Henry Tudor. The rest, as they say (they always say, ‘as they say’) is history. In Shakespeare’s play the defeated king pleads for a horse so he can flee. I would imagine Colonel (soon-to-be retired) Gadhafi probably wishes for just such a beast, and a fast one at that. It is also nigh on ten years since 911 and over the decade that has followed if there is one lesson that has surely been learnt from Afghanistan and Iraq it is this; there can be no ‘victory’ unless the peace has been properly planned for.

Things move quickly when a regime cracks, and with the former rebels now suddenly controlling four-fifths of Tripoli, the immediate end-game is afoot. For a short time celebrations can be permitted. However, the real work starts now and experience from Afghanistan and Iraq suggest planning for the peace will not be easy.

I have just done an interview for the BBC’s flagship radio news programme, “The Today Programme”. I made the following points concerning the bumpy political road that inevitably lies ahead:

1. Establish limits to outside influence: We outsiders need to be clear about our role and our legitimate objectives – to help the Libyan people establish a durable and legitimate political settlement.

2. Experience from Afghanistan and Iraq suggests that all parties to the conflict must be involved in political reconciliation early. If not an insurgency will gain ground. This is a particularly dangerous moment for Libya because if the four key tribes that supported Gadhafi begin to feel grievance an insurgency will develop.

3. Reprisal killings must be prevented and humanitarian suffering alleviated rapidly and even-handedly.

4. A seat of government must be rapidly established and protected.

5. A clear political timetable for transition must be established early. From experience a transitional regime will have roughly six months to a year to establish political legitimacy before inevitably disappointment sets in amongst fellow-travellers. No more than 15% of the population are what might be termed hard-core supporters of the former rebels.

6. Whilst disarmament and rehabilitation must begin early key state institutions such as the armed forces, essential services and the judicial system must be preserved so they can provide stability in transition. To that end, senior members of the Gadhafi regime charged under law must be seen to get a fair trial.

7. National elections must be woven into a new constitution and take place at the very latest two years from today. Safeguards must be built in

8. Outside support for the transitional government must be consistent, commensurate with the immediate humanitarian challenge, but subtle with a clear and stated goal of getting Libya back on its political economic feet early. Like Iraq Libya’s oil revenues will be critical and must be seen to benefit the Libyan people, not foreign companies.

9. International institutions must be seen to lead the support and assistance effort. A new UN Security Council resolution is now needed to legitimise support from key regional actors, the Arab League, the African Union and, of course, the European Union. Libya is, after all, in our neighbourhood.

10. Security, stabilisation and development are not sequential. They must be enacted in parallel.

Finally, the process must be civilian-led and be seen to be so. If the transition in Libya works a shining precedent will be established that burns bright across the Middle East. Fail and this is just the end of phase one in just another grubby, nasty “war amongst the people”, as Sir Rupert Smith once so eloquently put it.

And one final parochial thought. The British Armed Forces have played a critical role in enabling the former Libyan rebels to regain their country from Gadhafi. They remain a superb tool of and for British influence. I only hope the British Government now realises that and stops cutting them to the point of impotence. The world will never permit we British simply to get off the roundabout. Nor should we ourselves countenance such a retreat.

Julian Lindley-French



Sunday 21 August 2011

Libya: Carpe Diem Europe...For Once!

“No-one starts a war-or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so-without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it." Karl von Clausewitz

Alphen, the Netherlands. 21 August. Make no mistake; what is happening in Libya right now has the most profound of grand strategic implications for Europe and its future relations with the Arab world AND the future division of security responsibility with the United States. It could well come to define the transatlantic relationship of the twenty-first century.

This is a grand strategy defining moment taking place in Europe’s backyard and Europe in particular must for a moment put aside self-obsession and strategic political correctness. For once Europe as Europe must be clear about the outcome it wants in Libya. Indeed, what happens over the next fortnight is vital to Europe’s vital interests. Europe after all is the economic and to a significant extent the political centre of gravity for the entire Maghreb and Middle East. Look at a map!

However, time is short. We are fast approaching Europe’s maximum moment of influence over events in Libya. It is a moment that history suggests will soon pass. Get it right and Europe’s relationship with the Maghreb and the wider Middle East could be definitively re-defined for the better. Get it wrong and what Churchill once called the soft underbelly of Europe will face dangerous instability from the south for a generation to come.

The war in Libya could go two ways. Either it is approaching what Clausewitz called the culminating point, when the rebels reach the very limit of their advance and can go no further. Or, this is what Malcolm Gladwell calls the tipping point, "the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point." Either way, NATO’s air support for the rebel movement, allied to the arms embargo on the regime, seems to be critical.

Clausewitz also suggested that war is the continuation of policy, i.e, politics, by other means. War should thus only been seen as violent means to a political end. Thus far the mainly European coalition, albeit supported strongly by the US, has been focussed on the removal of Gadhaffi and his cohorts. Little attention has been paid to Libyan politics after the Fall. The true nature of the National Transitional Council or the forces behind it is little understood. This has been partly due to the politically correct and indeed correct desire to let the Libyan people settle this and for the Arab/Muslim world to see that to be so. The West is not very good at nation-building. However, European distraction also plays a part, allied to a chronic inability to think strategically collectively. The French and the British have driven this and with at best partial and lukewarm support from many Europeans. Indeed, for too many Europeans war has become the continuation of a strategy vacuum by other means.

It has also been a hot summer. The European Onion and its member-states have spent much of it variously engaged in trying to put out fires at home, literally, or saving its currency experiment from meltdown. No-one said leadership would be easy. This is one of those moments when leaders must give back for the fancy titles, officers, free first class air trips, fancy limos and free dinners. Call me a cynic if you must.

There are four possible outcomes all of which will have profound strategic implications for Europe and its Arab neighbours. First, stalemate continues, in which case more refugees flood across the Mediterranean. Second, the Gadhaffi regime collapses and in the aftermath the loose rebel coalition fractures, a general civil war ensues and Libya breaks up into a series of warring tribal fiefdoms. Third, the Gadhaffi regime again falls but in the absence of sufficient humanitarian and economic assistance from Europe a weak transitional government fails with Islamism taking hold in key centres. Fourth, Europe moves swiftly to replace military support with humanitarian and economic assistance under the existing UN Security Council mandate, in close co-ordination with the Arab League and African Union, and a transitional government is established which begins moving towards some form of democracy. Hard planning is now needed to ensure Option Four is realised.

Why Europe? Because we are here and because we are not America! For once therefore Europe must not simply react to events. The long-promised and seemingly fabled EU humanitarian force must now be readied and for once given the mandate and the resources to act the moment NATO suspends its air campaign. The critical commodity at this critical moment will be political legitimacy. That is why any such action must be taken by the European Onion, not simply a loose coalition of former European imperial powers. Put simply, this is a chance for the Onion’s hitherto meaningless and hollowed out Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) to actually do something beyond the exaggeratedly rhetorical.

Thus far CSDP has been an empty policy led by empty people. The Onion’s two Dear Super-Leaders, President Van Rompuy and the Onion’s foreign and security policy supremo Baronness Ashton, have thus far proven themselves unwilling or unable to rise above the normal fray of national super-pettiness that marks the normal day in the normal life of the Onion. Indeed, if ever there was a time for the Lady from Lancashire to show leadership it is now.

Europe; carpe diem! Baroness Ashton – seize the moment!

Julian Lindley-French

Wednesday 17 August 2011

Britain Did Not Lose an Empire...It Simply Moved In!

“When my country, into which I had just set my foot, was set on fire about my ears, it was time to stir. It was time for every man to stir” Thomas Paine

Chinon, France. 17 August, 2011. As I write this I gaze upon the noble ruins of Chinon castle, once the hub of an enormous twelfth century English empire that spanned more than half of France. The regions around Chinon even spoke early English! This enormous monument to permanence is on first sight the very embodiment of power and might. Below Henry II’s great bastion the river Vienne flows serene, a ribbon of velvet across the sun-baked golden landscape of ‘eternal’ France. In the fields sunflowers bow their heads in proud penitence, whilst ripe, purple grapes drip from ancient vines like ruby jewels, awaiting their moment to serve Bacchus. And yet this empire of certainty lasted but one generation before it too crumbled and died like so many before and after. Chinon is in fact a monument to uncertainty.

In many ways Chinon is thus the perfect place to reflect on the events that singed London’s fringe last week. A million miles away, maybe, but even here change and uncertainty are never far from the gilded surface of la France profonde. Coping with and adapting to change and uncertainty has been the genius of a France often besieged on all sides. Coping with change and uncertainty is also the truth we are all facing as the false certainties of the twentieth century fade from this very twentieth-first century present.

What happened in England could befall all Western states if the state fails the people. The riots, what the French call les emeuts, were ended not so much by the state, but by ordinary people of all colours and creeds who sensing the failure of the state began to act. It was as though instinctively the duties of the citizen were recalled and acted upon.

My subject here is hyper-immigration because even if the Whitehall bubble/village does not want to hear it the English street is putting much of the blame for the riots on the frictions caused by uncontrolled hyper-immigration. Clearly, not all of England’s many ills can be blamed on the hyper-immigration of the last fifteen years that was so strangely imposed on the English people by what became known in England as Labour’s Scottish Government of Occupation. Indeed, it is said that Gordon Brown was the best Prime Minister Scotland ever had! This is probably a little unfair but given his obsession with the developing world Brown clearly forgot that development begins at home. In fact Brown was simply at the end of a long-line of left-liberal experimenters who whilst well-meaning to all intents and purposes destroyed the balance between rights and responsibilities upon which all democracies rely.

The first challenge therefore will be to grasp the true nature of the problem. Stopping immigration is not in and of itself the solution. In any case, preventing people seeking a better life is like trying to stop gravity. No, the real challenge will be to deal effectively with the uncertainty engendered by the change hyper-immigration has come to represent.

Rather hyper-immigration has become an easy metaphor for all that is wrong with a deeply divided society. England is a country divided by class, divided by race and dangerously divided between those who pay taxes and those who live off said taxes. Hyper-immigration is also part of Britain’s story. The last chapter if you will of a grand story of empire. Many of the states that were born of the British Empire are corrupt and in some cases close to collapse. They are assailed collectively by massive population growth that their under-developed institutions are simply unable or unwilling to cope with. As a consequence they export people to Britain.

Taken together with the massive influx of Eastern Europeans since 2006 the loss of social cohesion is plain for all to see, save those in the Whitehall village determined to look the other way. The challenge now must be to a) better prepare immigrants to succeed in British society; b) prevent further immigration en masse further adding to the legions of welfare dependents; and c) alleviate the marked fear across much of the indigenous population that is becoming daily more apparent. White flight is a reality in England today.

To do this will require of the elite a political courage they have lacked for a generation. It is a mark of the thought fascism that pervades much of the chattering class, who by and large do not have to live with the consequences of their social engineering, that only ethnic minorities may talk about race. The fact is that race is intrinsically linked to culture and identity.  Endlessly and disingenuously talking up diversity as though it is strength whilst at the same time failing to confront the negative consequence of difference has led to millions of people leading parallel rather than connected lives. The disconnect between policy and reality has thus become starkly dangerous. David Cameron, employing one of the endless metaphors politicians use to avoid using ‘race’ or ‘immigrant’, likes to talk about Britain’s ‘communities’. They are in fact more like ghettoes and becoming ever more so.

So what lessons do I now draw from the les emeuts. First, it is not too late to rebuild English society. However, government must realize that having seen their sense of fair play and tolerance exploited ruthlessly by both Left and Right over hyper-immigration the English are reaching the end of their tether. Second, whilst multiculturalism as a social entity is a fact the way multiculturalism has been enacted as policy has created the impression immigrant cultures are promoted at the expense of English culture and identity. The Left likes to say England has no culture as such to justify this. In fact, England has a rich tapestry of regional cultures that need protecting. Third, the left-liberal experiment by which all malfeance is either forgiven or explained away is so denuding the individual of responsibility that society is rapidly subsiding into an abyss Fourth, it is time to stand up to all those on the Left who accuse of racism anyone with a point of view on hyper-immigration not of their own ilk. This has cowed the majority into an angry silence over what is one of the most profound changes to English society ever seen.

What’s next? The way out of this mess – for that is what it is – will require enlightened conservatism (with a small ‘c’). There must be a new concept of citizenship promoted actively and ruthlessly across the school system and beyond, driven by a bipartisan political consensus with roots deep into civil society. The duties of citizenship will be listed and communicated – loyalty to the state; respect for the law; respect for others and their property. Above all, political leaders must not only stop talking in metaphors about hyper-immigration and its consequences, but recognize that it is precisely that issue that concerns society above all others. That debate must be legitimized once and for all.

Finally we must not only face up to the fact of hyper-immigration but begin to build a new country around it. For then we will be better placed to cope with the many uncertainties that lie before us all and only then can we finally take race out of the social equation.

Former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson once said that Britain had lost an empire, but had yet to find a role. He was wrong. Britain did not lose an empire…it simply moved in.

Julian Lindley-French

Sunday 14 August 2011

"About Time, Mr President" . The Atlantic Charter Then and Now


Blois, France. 14 August, 2011.  Seventy years ago today President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill met for the first time off the Canadian coast.  “About time, Mr President”, said as the two men met.  What emerged from that fateful meeting was the “Joint Declaration by the President and the Prime Minister”, which was soon to be termed “The Atlantic Charter”
The Charter was agreed at one of the darkest moments of a dark world in a dark and dangerous war.  This single document not only created the transatlantic relationship but it quite simply galvanised the democratic saved.  It words might sound quaint to a modern audience but its spirit should not.  If today’s transatlantic leaders can share even a part of grand vision the two statesmen laid out then the transatlantic relationship has every chance of being as influential in our world as theirs.  Therefore, at this dangerous moment, with a world in turmoil, with western societies torn from within, with a West losing its self-belief and its political ambition and with a transatlantic relationship weaker than at any time since 1941 it is worth pausing to recall the words of that simple but world-changing piece of political paper.
“The President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, representing His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, being met together, deem it right to make known certain common principles in the national policies of their respective countries on which they base their hopes for a better future for the world.
First, their countries seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other;
Second, they desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned;
Third, they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them;
Fourth, they will endeavour, with due respect for their existing obligations, to further the enjoyment by all States, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity;
Fifth, they desire to bring about the fullest collaboration between all nations in the economic field with the object of securing, for all, improved labour standards, economic advancement and social security;
Sixth, after the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny, they hope to see established a peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all the men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want;
Seventh, such a peace should enable all men to traverse the high seas and oceans without hindrance;
Eighth, they believe that all of the nations of the world, for realistic as well as spiritual reasons must come to the abandonment of the use of force. Since no future peace can be maintained if land, sea or air armaments continue to be employed by nations which threaten, or may threaten, aggression outside of their frontiers, they believe, pending the establishment of a wider and permanent system of general security, that the disarmament of such nations is essential. They will likewise aid and encourage all other practicable measures which will lighten for peace-loving peoples the crushing burden of armaments”.
If Churchill were with us today he would doubtless be urging both American and European leaders to re-visit the grand vision of 1941.  He would be impatient with the small-mindedness of today’s small leaders and would have chastised the doom-mongers and nay-sayers who say it is too late to save the world the West built. 
It is not too late for America and Europe to lead this uncertain dangerous world to a safer place but it soon will be.  It is not too late for America to regain the self-belief that made the American century possible.  It is not too late for Europeans to regain the spirit that created a free and just Europe our grandfathers would scarcely have believed and to organise effectively to influence their world.  However, it will take leaders of vision.
Seventy years on from the Atlantic Charter it is, as Churchill would have put it, about time!
Julian Lindley-French

Tuesday 9 August 2011

London's Burning

9 August. “London's burning! London's burning! All across the town, all across the night”. So goes the song by The Clash from the last time London burned in the early 1980s. Last night I watched aghast as streets I know were torched by a mindless, criminal mob. People were robbed in their beds before being burned out of their homes. Businesses were torched and looted, livelihoods smashed forever. As ever, the BBC was full of the speculators – apologists for the thugs vying with the hang’ em high and long brigade; although being the BBC the emphasis was very much on the former.

The simple sad truth is that for over a decade I have been watching my once great country descend into this multicultural hell-hole led by a political class so complacent, so lost in its political correctness that no issue can now be addressed properly or objectively. Every act, every deed, every tension has to be presented through the stupefying lens of pretence. Policy is thus pretend policy in a pretend Britain; a fairy-tale Britain with a foreign capital at its heart. Indeed, London stopped being an English city some years ago and is now a dangerous cocktail of competing races, creeds and ethnicities on the front line of a new class war that one had hoped banished to the past.

There will be much wringing of hands by the politically guilty who either through design or neglect created the conditions for this mayhem. They will pretend that the causes are hard to discern. Working groups will be established and no doubt a royal commission set-up to kick cause and effect into the long grass in the hope it can become someone else’s problem. Spin has replaced leadership in Britain.

This is not a Left or Right thing – both are guilty. In the past two days I have been in contact with two friends, one black the other white, who operate at the extreme ends of the policy cycle. One is on the Left and advises the highest of the high on these matters and recently spoke out against the progressive elite and their disconnectedness from contemporary British social reality. The other works on the front-line of inner city youth despair and has for years been warning of precisely this mayhem and been studiously ignored. Nor is this simply a ‘black’ v ‘white’ thing. The term ‘black’ has now become utterly misleading as it has come to mean any non-white, non-indigenous group thus masking much more complex social challenges and issues.

The causes are not hard to discern:

1. Hyper-immigration and multiculturalism: The hyper-immigration of the past decade was cynically promoted by the Left to create a new working class. This led to the import of some 1.9 million over the past decade from some of the most socially and religiously conservative places on the planet. The ghettos that resulted either pushed out traditional communities or created tensions with long-standing immigrant communities. Consequently, multiculturalism, i.e. lazy government, has led to the creation of fortress communities, with no sense of national or social obligation. Last night several were at war with each other.

2. Unemployment and loss of control over borders: Britain has lost control of its borders far more than any other member of the European Onion, which is quite an achievement for an island. The Right has exploited this by flooding the labour market with cheap labour from Eastern Europe. Job opportunities for Britain’s young have dried up. Last year 400,000 new jobs were created in Britain with 87% going to foreigners.

3. Loss of control over legal sovereignty: The transfer of legal sovereignty to European institutions, particularly human rights legislation has emaciated English law. This has led in turn to police and judicial forces wholly uncertain as to how to deal with minorities in particular.

4. The failure of education: For years now education has been an ideological battleground. Educators have retreated into a fantasy land of pointless qualifications that fail utterly to prepare much of Britain’s youth for today’s world. There are now whole swathes of modern British society unable to communicate effectively in English.

5. White fear and the submerging of racism: White flight from many British cities has left many city centres full of poor whites and often even poorer minorities, erroneously blaming each other for their wretched condition. After the riots of the 1980s the rampant racism of the time was rightly targeted. For a time it worked but with the hyper-immigration of the last decade or so white fear has re-fuelled racism. However, today it is now an underground movement whispered in corridors for fear of being overheard by the thought police of political correctness. Paradoxically, such racism has been compounded by the appalling political correctness of the mainstream media that at times has made the 80% majority feel like a threatened minority.

6. The fact of discrimination: Minorities are still discriminated against. Fact.

7. The loss of respect for authority: With the break-down of social cohesion over the past twenty years neither institutions nor authorities are any longer respected. The England of the past survived on the basis that rights were balanced by responsibilities. Today, it is only rights that are discussed, never responsibilities. The trust that once bound the fabric of society has gone.

8. Criminality: With the failure of education, the break-down of the family and loss of opportunity and social cohesion a new gang culture has emerged in many inner-cities, often driven by the drugs trade much of which is targeted on Britain. That criminality is plain for all to see, not just in London, but in other British cities.

The solutions will be slow and difficult:

1. No nostalgia: Some commentators implicitly hark back to some mythical golden age in British society. There was no such age. I grew up in the 1970s and it was pretty rough. We British have the society we have and we must start from where we are.

2. Scrap multiculturalism as policy: The officially sanctioned ghettos of multiculturalism must over time be replaced by much greater efforts at integration. Indeed, government must painstakingly begin to rebuild a British identity through integration. Yes, it will be a ‘British and…’ identity. British and West Indian, British and Pakistani etc. etc. And, no, it will not be the British identity of old. The key will be citizenship.

3. Regain control of the borders: There can be no more hyper-immigration until society has coped with the last surge. If that means scrapping or adjusting human rights legislation that immigration lawyers exploit then so be it.

4. Regain control of the economy: ‘British jobs for British workers’, was a slogan invented by Gordon Brown that was much ridiculed. Why then do Britain’s continental neighbours seem able to strike a much better balance between opportunities for home-grown and imported labour. In Britain today there is now an entire generation condemned to welfare dependency by the structure of the economy and its reliance on imported foreign labour. It is precisely in such groups that resentment breeds.

Above all, leaders must now finally lead by confronting Britain's tortured reality.  That in turn demands they remember their first duty; to act in the interests of all the British people. Right now the task must be to stabilise the situation.  It is self-evident that the planned 20% cut in the police force cannot proceed. It is self-evident that far more needs to be done to engage Britain’s lost young. Indeed, the Government needs to take a much more sophisticated view of cuts as it will be utterly pointless to reduce Britain’s mountain of debt at the expense of social chaos. Sadly, one cause of that debt was a Labour Government fully aware of the social mess it had caused and which sought simply to buy off the consequences.  It is a Labour Party still in denial. 

The Britain I knew is dead. It has gone forever, is no more and will never return. It is hard for an Englishman of my age to accept that my country was given away without my permission. And yet I am prepared to accept just that it if it means that a new Britain emerges that honours its heritage of tolerance, fairness and justice for all in a new age.

My challenge to the political elite is simple; which of you will have the guts to withstand the progressive elite and the vested interests to break the political correctness that for too long has denied reality and which has turned Britain from one of the great nations into a Potemkin’s Village. It is village that is now in flames.

David Cameron? We will soon find out!

Julian Lindley-French

Saturday 6 August 2011

Crisis? What Crisis? How to Save a Debt-Drowning Planet

In late 1979, with the public service unions on strike and with the national debt spiraling out of control, Britain began to resemble a toilet. Prime Minister Jim Callaghan returned from a ‘summit’ in Guadeloupe (they never seem to hold summits in Rotherham or Detroit). The Sun, one of Britain’s Murdoch tabloid newspapers, famed for their restraint and balance as well as the correct use of the telephone, suggested to sun-tanned Jim on his return that there might be just ever such a teeny tad of a problem. "Well”, Jim thundered, “that’s a judgment that you are making. I promise you that if you look at it from outside, and perhaps you're taking rather a parochial view at the moment, I don't think that other people in the world would share the view that there is mounting chaos." Next morning The Sun ran the now infamous headline, “Crisis? What Crisis?” Enter Margaret Thatcher stage right!

What crisis indeed. Thanks to utter political ineptitude by those we collectively employ to lead the mortgage crisis, banking crisis, sovereign and debt crisis, and probably climate change as well, have now merged into what looks like the great mega-collapse of the twenty-first century. Thought you had savings? Thought you had a pension? No, if you are a western European you will soon be offered the compulsory ‘chance’ to ‘invest’ in stellar sun-drenched opportunities in Italy, Greece, Spain via the new Euro-Debt. Not only will you have miraculously acquired this debt ‘opportunity’ but you will be reassured to know that your former savings will be administered by the incredibly open, honest and efficient European Onion. If you are American, leave now. You are about to discover true cost of pork in DC and it ain’t cheap.

So, where are our collective ‘leaders’ (I used the word advisedly because ‘leading’ they ain’t). Well, David Cameron is on holiday in Tuscany. Good idea! Italy is cheap at the moment and probably will be for the next millennium or so. He did at least have a chat with the Governor of the Bank-rupt of England, which did huge amounts to calm the ‘markets’. Meanwhile, his buddy, President Barack Obama has taken decisive action to reduce America’s debt, but not until after he has been re-elected in 2012. Well, this seems fair enough. By then in addition to America losing its triple AAA credit rating, the Dollar will no longer be the world’s reserve currency and the global financial structure will have collapsed. That will teach the Chinese a lesson they will never forget.

The good news is that the French and Italians have taken decisive action by together calling an emergency meeting of the finance ministers of the G7. The words ‘deckchairs’ and ‘Titanic’ come to mind. France has of course called the meeting because the French always like meetings. Italy has called the meeting because having cooked the book for years they are about to be found out and want to get their denials in first. So, how can we help the French and the Italians save the planet?

First, the G7 should consider its membership and turn itself into a consolidated debt. The Group of Seven today comprises the world’s leading seven debts; Britain (utterly broke but pretending not to be by talking loudly at others and showing the world a stiff upper lip), Canada (a mythical land somewhere near America which has huge natural resources, no people and therefore little value), France (soon-to-be broke but with big ideas they are keen for the Germans to pay for), Germany (not broke but terminally selfish and determined not to pay for the French, Italians and the rest of the southern Onionistas), Italy (don't even go there), Japan (destroyed by an earthquake and broke beyond repair), and, of course, the United States (the richest, biggest and most powerful debt on the planet). Noticeable by their absence are the Indians (noticeably not broke and being paid for by the British aid budget.  This is OK because the British Government is using its debt to fund everybody else but the British these days) and the Chinese (very noticeably not broke and buying everybody else’s debt so that they can still afford to attend G7 meetings).

Second, the so-called ‘market-movers’ should be shot. Did we really defeat communism to create this morally, politically and financially bankrupt chaos? Now, I am no Socialist – heaven forbid, but is the future of the world and its seven or so billion inhabitants really dependent upon a small bunch of headless and heartless chickens who apparently panic every time Mrs Ohio maxes out her credit card? Abolutism leads to mayhem – be it over-mighty states or under-regulated markets. Indeed, markets by their very nature exaggerate extremes – both positive and negative – because they screw the rest of us simply by moving the markets. Some form of control has to be re-asserted by states to prevent the currency speculators switching from one market to another to trigger runs on currencies. The so-called ‘money men’ should be left in no doubt that if they continue to threaten the financial futures of millions through short-term speculation they too will face consequences.

Third, political leaders of the greatly indebted and the greatly owed must agree a proper plan. They must now move decisively to put their financial houses in order even if this takes years and even if it means southern Europeans paying their taxes and working a little harder. Even working a bit would help. China can no longer be permitted to keep the Yuan artificially low simply to entrap others in debt. The West must together to get its debt under control.
Above all, it is time for the real political leaders to get off their well-upholstered back-sides in their well-upholstered villas to demonstrate a collective will to deal once and for all with what is now meltdown financial contagion.

Fail and the ensuing disaster would not only destroy bank accounts. This is the stuff world wars are made of.

We do not need G7s or G20s, just G bloody do something! Crisis? What crisis?

Julian Lindley-French

Wednesday 3 August 2011

The Lamps Are Going Out All Over Europe

The German-Belgian border. 3 August, 2011. Ninety-seven years ago to the day Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary, looked out of his palatial, imperial London office and said, “The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our time”. A few hours later two German armies smashed into Belgium. The First World War had begun. 8 August, 1918, four years and millions of dead later on what German generalissimo Ludendorff called “the black day of the German Army” the British Army crushed the Germans at the Battle of Amiens. At the spearhead of the Allied thrust the British Army battered Germany into such a comprehensive defeat that in November 1918 the British held a victory parade in Cologne. Britain and France had prevailed but at a cost evident even to this day in every town and village across both countries.

Even as the British and French seemed to be at the very peak of their power those four years of struggle had in fact begun Europe’s long decline. Indeed, Grey was looking down on the apogee of British and European power in the world. And yet, even Grey could not have understood that his fears would not only come true but mark the beginning of a century of European retreat, much of it self-inflicted.

For many years following that ‘war to end all wars’ Europeans of various persuasions rallied to ideologies and nationalisms to mask the fact of decline. America rapidly retreated into isolationism from its brief and belated foray into the struggle between democracy and authoritarianism that was the essence of the First World War. Britain and France were left to soldier on as the great hollowed out world leaders. For Europeans the Second World War and the Cold War only hastened the decline and the further retreat into a myth deemed ever more central by elites unable to bridge the gap between power and paucity - paucity of strategy, paucity of capability, and paucity of ambition.

With Europeans effectively denuded of financial power the myth that has sustained European democracies these hundred years past is now revealed for what it is – a theatre de l’absurde. Europe and Europeans are thus faced with the most profound of choices.  Does Europe accept its precipitate retreat from influence and enslave itself to the policies and strategies of the newly enriched but less ‘enlightened’? Or, does Europe finally, collectively and realistically take stock of its perilous strategic position and begin the slow and purposeful return to a credible ability to shape the twenty-first century?

Diplomatic and military power are today no less important than in Grey’s day. And yet, the great European defence depression is apparent across the length and breadth of the Old Continent, whatever the strategically-challenged or insanely optimistic like to pretend.

Today, the UK House of Commons Defence Committee has just published a damning report to which I gave evidence (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012//cmselect/cmdfence/761/76102.htm) on the relationship (or rather lack of it) between stated British national strategy and Britain’s ability to realise such a strategy given the swingeing cuts taking place in London's diplomatic and military instruments of power. Britain is not alone.  Such folly is evident across a Europe that continues to treat strategy like a No 8 London double-decker bus of old – something slow moving that one can hop on and off at will.

There are a range of solutions being offered by the think-wonk community to close the gap between strategic myth and defence reality, all of which are well-meaning, but all of which essentially miss the essential point: one can never create strategy through management. Some call for more effective and streamlined institutions. I am all for streamlining both NATO and the Onion, both of which too often resemble armed pensions, but the solution will not be found there. Some call for more pooling of equipment and specialisation of effort. This is all well and good but in the absence of a shared strategy and strategic culture such initiatives will fail. Indeed, it is precisely the absence of shared strategy that neuters the trust upon which such ideas flourish.  Can European solidarity survive danger? The evidence of the past decade would suggest not.

Equally, the status quo ante is no option either. The nature and pace of change in the world as we enter the instable Asian century reveals to the strategically insightful three verities that politicians on both sides of the Atlantic seem unable to grasp. Strategic, i.e. global, influence will be dependent on a) more of the transatlantic West; b) much more and closer European collaboration; and c) new partnerships with the likes of Australia, India and Japan. All three of which demand strategy and leadership.

Back to Britain and France. A European defence strategy worthy of the name and credible in this dangerous century will only be realised if America gets over its sulk about European ineptitude and Britain and France begin to take real steps towards creating a European defence strategic cluster. Leadership informed by strategy won the First World War. In 1914 the Entente between Britain and France was the key to victory. In 2011 the Franco-British Security and Defence Treaty is equally important as a down-payment on a strategic future for Europe, but only if it is imbued on both sides of the Channel with strategy and leadership, as opposed to spin and pretence.

Churchill writing of France at the end of World War One could have been writing of Europe today. “Worn down, doubly decimated, but undisputed masters of the hour, the French nation peered into the future in thankful wonder and haunting dread. Where then was that security without which all that had been gained seemed valueless, and life itself, amidst the rejoicing of victory, was almost unendurable”?

Sir Edward is still looking for a lamp that will lead Europe out of the trench into which it has fallen.

Requiescat in Pace.

Julian Lindley-French