Welcome To Merklande?

Tal-y-Wern, deepest, darkest Wales. 16 May. Plinlimmon, Cader Idris and Mount Snowdon slumber around me as I write (on a dodgy laptop).  Those great, sleeping Welsh dragons that legend has it will awake in the hour of Cymru’s (Wales) greatest peril.  This is Dylan Thomas country full of myth and the legends of failed struggles against the great beast to the east – England.  Sitting here listening to the sound of sheep and swallows, watching house martins dove and dive around me it is just about as far from the Euro crisis as it is possible to get these days in Europe.  And yet here it is, oozing from the political landscape like the metal-laden waters that seep from the ubiquitous Welsh slate. The second half of the Euro-crisis is now well underway and within the year I, the Dutch taxpayer, will either own all of southern Europe’s debt or the Euro will be in a death-dive and my savings with it.  That was the stark choice on the Berlin menu last night for Europe’s two most important politicians – Chancellor Merkel and newly-crowned President Hollande.

Bond’s the name-Eurobond.  Forget all the talk of ‘growth’. ‘Growth’ is but a French euphemism for the ‘mutualisation’ of southern Europe’s (and France’s) enormous debts in the name of ‘Europe’.  In much the same way as ‘austerity’ is a German euphemism for ‘hands off my money’.  You will hear a lot of ‘mutualisation’ in the months to come, reinforced by calls for ‘solidarity’ as southern Europeans seek to force northern Europeans to pay for their profligacy and northern Europeans try to limit their exposure to what could become a life-long dependency.

And yet something has to shift and President Hollande may have a point.  European civilisation began in Greece and may end there if decisive action is not taken. There is a humanitarian tragedy developing in Greece which is a disgrace to modern Europe. Can the need to support Greeks be separated from the now blindingly obvious – Greece’s exit from the Euro without bringing down both the single currency and/or European democracy?
 

To be frank the latter worries me more than the former. To British ears the ease with which the majority of southern Europeans seem prepared to abandon democracy for technocracy seems bizarre but then in most of Europe’s periphery countries democracy only dates from the mid-70s at the earliest.  And, of course, a drowning man will hang onto any piece of flotsam and jetsam and that is all that is on offer at present from Europe’s hopeless leaders.  What is also clear is that it will take far longer than hoped for southern European countries to be stabilised and cost far more. Whatever happens a plan is needed to that effect which does not simply create the excuse for further profligacy and at the same time offers people some hope. This is what we pay leaders for.

And what of Britain?   The mood on the farm here is pretty belligerent.  This time last year I conducted a ‘scientific’ survey in a pub in my native Yorkshire where the mood was clear – get us out of this mess. It is not of our making and we did not vote for it. Yesterday I posed the same question here and got the same answer.

 

 

Welsh native wit has a point.  If the only way Greece can recover is outside the Euro, the only way Britain can recover influence is outside the EU. Berlin and Paris have successfully used the EU to neutralise Britain which has become a kind of Belgium with nukes. Indeed, for the first time in a thousand years Europe has nothing to offer Britain and Britain nothing to offer Europe.  Worse is to come. To pay for France’s enormous debts President Hollande will insist upon a British-busting tax on financial transactions in the name of ‘growth’, ‘Europe’, ‘solidarity’ and ‘mutualisation’.  Indeed, the French seem to see Britain as a large, gagged cow tethered to the continent ripe for milking.  More likely than not in an effort to protect the German taxpayer from French ambitions for ‘growth’ Chancellor Merkel will accede to such demands.

Is there a middle way?  In the longer-term no but in the short-term one must be found.  Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg suggested recently that one of the most successful political entities in history could not survive without the EU and by extension the ‘guidance’ of self-interested Berlin and Paris. That is patently wrong. At the same time Britain needs to ply an active role in solving what is now a strategic crisis. However, if Britain is not actively courted as a strategic partner by Germany and France then Britain must instead focus its future on a dynamic world economy and will be forced to turn away from a European economy that will be in intensive and expensive care for years and a European political project that is inimical to the British interest. That is the other choice implicit in this crisis.  

The bottom-line is this; the only way to save the Euro is to move towards political and fiscal union via ‘mutualisation’ and ‘solidarity’. – Merklande.  To that end a European finance ministry and minister is just around the corner.  Forget talk of the single market – the Euro is the EU and the EU is the Euro.  And, the British should be under no illusions; Europe’s political elite will go to great lengths to protect the Euro – Europe’s quintessential political project. 

As they say in Wales – if we have to part let us do so as friends.

Merkozy is dead. Welcome to Merklande?

Julian Lindley-French        

The True Meaning of Solidarity, M. Hollande

Alphen, the Netherlands, 9 May

Cher M. Hollande,

First, let me congratulate you on your victory. You are about to become president of a great country which is at the heart of European affairs and a major influence on world politics. Second, I accept that much of the scaremongering about your intentions is no doubt (hopefully) misplaced. You are an experienced politician who has been in and around power for many years and you will be fully aware of the realities all we Europeans face.  Only together have we the slightest hope of escaping from the many dangers that confront us. Third, let me apologise for my Prime Minister, David Cameron. Whoever was advising Mr Cameron to publicly support M. Sarkozy should be shot.

The February article in Le Monde was particularly ill-advised. It has been clear for sometime to anyone with even the slightest modicum of political sense that you were likely to be the next incumbent of the Élysee. The word on the political street is that Downing Street was being advised by the Paris Embassy. That does not add up. First, knowing the quality of British diplomats at the embassy I find it very hard to believe that they would make such a basic error of political analysis. Second, this has all the hallmarks of an incompetent Downing Street machine trying to shift blame for their own failings onto poor civil servants who cannot speak for themselves. Nothing new there then.

So, having got the Yorkshire political finesse out of the way (I know you French like that kind of thing) let me cut to the quick (this will help your already excellent English). No sooner had you won on Sunday than you went on radio to attack Britain for protecting our vital national interests. Put simply, M. Hollande, we are in for a very rocky road if we are to have another five years of you French blaming we British for being right about the Euro and then attacking us for a lack of ‘solidarity’ when we defend a fundamental national interest – the City.  This is even more galling when you French think it perfectly fair to protect French national interests often (and this really gets me) in the name of 'Europe'. Indeed, the logic of the interview you gave was essentially to attack we British for being right about the structural flaws in the Euro and then insist we pay for fixing it.

My point is this (yes, I have finally arrived at my point which given your ENA training will no doubt condemn me as another sloppy Brit); do not expect to attack us one day and then expect us to co-operate the next. Specifically, if you set out to impose a City of London-bashing Financial Services Transaction Tax you can forget co-operation over defence. You know as well as I do that some 90% of that tax will be paid by the City of London and that it will represent a direct attack on British strategic interests. You also know there is no such thing as a free tax and that not only will it damage the competitiveness of the City of London (a French strategic objective?) but damage the British economy and by extension the hard-pressed ordinary Briton.

In that light let me offer you two pieces of advice (I do not offer them ‘humbly’ as I do not do humble). First, given the context you may wish to avoid use of that tedious French word ‘solidarité’. You are about to leave for a NATO summit in Chicago at which you will announce the early withdrawal of France’s excellent troops from Afghanistan. I have had the honour on occasions of working with the French military and they do great honour to your great country. However, the bottom-line is this (as we say in Yorkshire), your early withdrawal will mean more British troops will die and we British (and Americans) have done too much of the dying in Afghanistan. For that reason we find talk of ‘solidarité’ just ever so slightly hypocritical.

Second, seize this moment to fashion a new start in what remains a critical Franco-British relationship. We need to accentuate the positives in our relationship (and there are many) to find a way forward for all Europeans at this difficult time. Specifically, we need an early British-French-German summit that can coldly and practically address all the challenges we face – economic, social and security. High level unity of purpose and effort is critical at this dangerous moment and all we are getting is division, discord and narrow political calculation. The Great European Crisis is a big strategic picture crisis needing big power strategic and systemic solutions.  Real solidarity means that at the very least Europe’s three major powers act together for the good of all. Without such an injection of strategic political purpose the institutions, be it the EU and/or NATO will fail and once again the ordinary European citizen will have been failed by you the über-élite.

So, in conclusion (yes, there is one) let us together put meaning into solidarity M. Hollande. Hold off on your Brit-bashing and treat us with the respect we deserve and we will reciprocate by working with you to build a relationship that can help get us all through the very turbulent days that doubtless lay ahead.

With sincere best wishes for your success in office,

Julian Lindley-French

Made in China: Is America Losing its Grand Strategic Mojo?

Alphen, the Netherlands. 4 May. Former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson once famously remarked that Britain had lost an empire but had not yet found a role.  Sadly, many years later London’s strategic bankruptcy means Britain is still searching, but what of the US?  Nothing that has happened of late suggests an America that is thinking hard about how it will lead in the big, brave and dangerous world which is about to emerge from behind the mask of two wars and a sub-prime economy.  Is America losing the will to make grand strategy?     

On the face of it President Obama’s rather unconvincing commitment this week to “finish the job” in Afghanistan, China’s rather brusque rejection of American attempts to finesse the human rights of one Chinese activist and Hilary Clinton’s rather stuttering ‘big issues’ visit to Beijing are only tangentially connected.  

In fact the US needs Chinese support to get out of Afghanistan if it is to retain even a modicum of strategic honour.  However, the price Beijing will exact from Washington for helping engineer a modicum of stability in Afghanistan’s post-American space will be high.  In spite of the sacrifice of Western soldiers and the huge amounts of Western taxpayer’s money that has been poured into Afghanistan this past decade it is China that will extract Afghanistan’s high-value natural resources.  Beijing will also expect less criticism of its human rights and Chinese mercantilism. However, the real prize for Beijing will be geopolitical; it is China that post-2014 could well define stability in Asia if the US is seen to give too much ground.  

     

Tellingly, Hillary Clinton’s visit to Beijing was not the big news this week; that looked too much like a hard-pressed American administration seeking Chinese favours in election year.  The big news was the treatment of Chen Guangcheng – by both Beijing and Washington.  America remains the natural beacon for those Chinese discontent with the ‘we will make China powerful but do not question how’ deal the post-Tiananmen Communist Party has long offered its people. 

Afghanistan? For all this week’s talk of strategic partnership one year on from the killing of Osama bin Laden Afghanistan is old news in American politics.  President Obama promised to get America out of two contentious wars in Afghanistan and Iraq prior to November’s presidential election.  His two exit strategy is on track, if not on time.

So, for all this week's rhetoric America is beating a strategic retreat.  If that political retreat leads to a new global balance of power that is not ‘made in America’ Asia and much of the world beyond will come to reflect Chinese interests rather than American values.  The rest of us will be forced in time to occupy the sodden, swampy quicksand in between.  Such a world would take on the appearance of nineteenth century Europe – a cold, hard place in which change is driven by the narrow interests of narrow, cynical elites.  Absent American strategic leadership India will be forced to treat with China as the dominant regional power; Japan will be forced to look to itself for security and what price Taiwan? 

The Washington-Beijing axis will be the defining power relationship of this age. However, Washington must be careful not to sell its soul in pursuit of such a relationship.  Beijing must be held to account and prove it is prepared to work for such a relationship. How China treats its citizens should be as important to Washington as the fasihoning of power balances.  Indeed, the critical balance in American strategy is the one between values and interests that has defined American leadership and must continue to do so.  Therefore, Washington must look up from the Afghan trench into which it has fallen, overcome its palpable strategic exhaustion and begin a bipartisan effort to consider America’s new leadership challenge in the post Osama bin Laden world. 

As a Briton I can on occasions find the Americans irritating. Much of that I put down to my jealousy as I watch my once proud country decline into irrelevance.  However, the plain truth is that a just world needs a posturing, irritating, big-mouthed, big ideas America. If America becomes just like the rest of us then the world will be far the worst for it.  If a Beijing-placating US henceforth merely mouths human rights platitudes the battle for ideas will be over before it has begun and Americans will have vacated their ‘shining city on the hill’ to join the rest of us on the muddy plains of power and weakness.

At the very least a second term Obama administration will need to offer Americans and the world more than a ‘we got you out of two bad wars’ strategy.  A Romney administration will need a bigger idea than deficit-reduction or the strategic pretence of neo-isolationism.

  

It was of course Churchill who made that famous quip about one being able to rely upon the Americans making the right decision, but only after every other option had been exhausted.  I am beginning to wonder.

Is America losing its strategic mojo? If it is twenty-first grand strategy will be made in China.

Julian Lindley-French 

Pakistan: The Hotel California of World Politics

Alphen, the Netherlands. 30 April. Pakistan is a nuclear power with a population of some 187 million of whom between 25% and 30% live below the UN-defined poverty line situated in just about the most fraught place on the planet. This weekend’s tragic and brutal murder of Red Cross aid worker Khalil Dale has once again brought home how dangerous Pakistan is...and how important Pakistan remains.

The Western intervention in Afghanistan deeply destabilised an already unstable political balance between Pakistan’s two largest ethnic groupings the Punjabis (45% of the population) and Pashtun (16% of the population). Whatever efforts are made to stabilise Afghanistan post-December 2014 without a Pakistan that enjoys a return to some semblance of political balance then such efforts are likely to fail. Pakistan is at the epicentre of instability in central south Asia and what happens there will affect us all.

When I visited Pakistan’s capital city Islamabad I was struck by how Islamabad is itself a metaphor for Pakistan – a beautiful but in many ways artificial creation sitting precariously between Punjab and the Pashtun tribal lands (the rather optimistically-named Federally-Administered Tribal Area) - built to bring some formality to chaos.

That the Islamic Republic of Pakistan works at all as a country is something of a miracle. Until 1971 Pakistan was far bigger as what is now Bangladesh was once East Pakistan but was lost in a disastrous war with India. Within Pakistan a venal elite too often put personal interests above and beyond those of the people. The Pashtun are really a separate 'nation' divided by a meaningless 1897 border between Afghanistan and Pakistan drawn by British colonial administrator Henry Durand to make London’s life easier. From its 1947 founding by Jinnah on independence from Britain Pakistan has always been a delicate compromise between the peoples who live within its complex borders and those that seek bits of it from without.

When I was briefed by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence the sheer scale of the challenges, risks and threats faced by the Pakistani state were all too apparent. Bordered by nascent superpower India to the south, real superpower China to the north-west, the dangerous space that is Afghanistan to the north and the difficult Iranians to the West Pakistan’s strategic reality has never been nor never will be an easy one.

The dispute between India and Pakistan over Jammu Kashmir has only gone on the back-burner because of Afghanistan, but it is still hot. Indeed, the inability of the NATO-led coalition to stabilise Pashtun southern Afghanistan is made more difficult by Pakistan’s need for ‘strategic depth’ in the event of a future war with India. India is also active therein to frustrate Pakistan and to ensure the Pakistani Army is forced to look north and south simultaneously.

China is Pakistan’s main but fickle ally - my enemy’s enemy is my friend. Pakistan will be the epicentre of any future nuclear turbulence between China and India. The Americans, in spite of the Af-Pak strategy, have poured billions into Pakistan without ever really understanding the place or the people.  Critically, they have lacked any real vision of what a relatively stable regional political, economic and, of course, communal settlement would look like. Indeed, Washington has too often seen Pakistan as a function of Afghanistan and paid insufficient attention to Pakistan itself. London? Too tied up in post-imperial political correctness and an appalling and self-imposed lack of strategic ambition to make use of the influence levers it still retains. Britain is strategically broken…and broke.

As the West considers Afghanistan's future it must also now consider its future support for Pakistan. Far from being a ‘small nation a long way away’ as Chamberlain once said of Czechoslovakia, what happens in Pakistan will ripple outwards into east Asia, south Asia, central Asia, Russia and the Middle East.  It will also profoundly unsettle the many millions from Pakistan and Bangladesh who now call Europe their half-home.

It is easy to become frustrated with Pakistan. However, the West must redouble efforts to work with Pakistan and its people to find a long-term political settlement that makes Pakistan work. That in turn will require not just engagement and investment but a respect for Pakistan and its people.  

Mr Dale was a very decent, brave man trying to do right by the people of Pakistan and we should honour him by ensuring that such efforts continue. Pakistan is after all the Hotel California of world politics; you can check out any time you wish, but you can never leave.

Julian Lindley-French

Why We Need a Smart NATO

Madrid, Spain. 27 April. There is some contention as to who actually said it – Winston Churchill, Admiral Lord Fisher or Ernest Rutherford but in any case some Brit once said, “Gentlemen, we have run out of money. Now is the time to think”. Sitting here in the Spanish capital in the wake of Real Madrid’s exit from soccer’s Champions League and with the Spanish Government this week coming clean about poor Spain’s economic nightmare the mood was not exactly upbeat. My reasons for coming was to speak at an excellent conference organised by Spanish think-tank INCIPE on the need for a smart NATO. What, you will rightly ask, is a smart NATO and what has it got to do with the price of paella? A lot.

The simple fact of strategic life is this. We live in a world of some seven billion plus souls all with legitimate needs and aspirations organised unevenly into more instable power states and failing states than at any time since 1648 and the end of the Thirty Years War. Many regimes are legitimised not by the vote but by economic growth and are therefore inherently rickety. Military expenditure in some parts of the world (Asia) is going through the roof and with it the technology to send more destruction from more sources to more places far further than ever before. Feeling better? At the same time Europe is mutating from being a military pygmy into whatever is smaller than a pygmy (no offence to pygmies). The Euro (understandably) is all that matters in Europe but this is still dangerously strategically myopic.

European strategic myopia is making the world in which we Europeans live (quite a few of us like to pretend we do not) even more dangerous than it already is. This is because the second simple fact of strategic life is that the world is a lot safer when the West is strong and a strong West must necessarily include credible European armed forces. This is something the 'architects' behind Britain’s disastrous 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review forgot.  Once the British, a cornerstone power in NATO, had given up on the big security and defence stuff the other Europeans had the perfect alibi to do the same.

The third fact of strategic life is that security is the first duty of the state. So, to counter Europe’s palpable retreat from strategic reality NATO has come up with something that on the face of its looks like an oxymoron; smart defence. Indeed, whenever I have heard the word ‘smart’ used in conjunction with ‘defence’ it has always invariably meant doing less with less or rather nothing with nothing.  

Smart Defence will be at the centre of things at NATO’s May Chicago Summit and rightly so. In simple terms (not NATO policy) Smart Defence is essentially about maintaining NATO’s security and defence credibility in an age of austerity by better managing and co-ordinating defence cuts in each respective NATO member, being much clearer about the core capabilities (NATO speak) the Alliance needs, promoting far closer multinational collaboration and streamlining of structures to that end allied to better prioritisation of defence investments in the big, expensive stuff such as missile defence, strategic air lift and advanced deployable forces upon which the much needed modernisation of Europe’s defence is dependent. Got that? 

Smart Defence will also be critical in reaching out to new partners world-wide in what is now a global collective security effort at maintaining stability in a very instable world.  This is the very essence of legitimate security and defence. In other words Smart Defence is a new way of doing defence business and we need it.

For all its failings only NATO can do this. It has the mechanisms, experiences and critically the processes and structures to enact what should lead to a vital and American-friendly reform to the European defence effort. By the way, those of you Europeans out there muttering about the EU should confront a fourth strategic fact of life; given the world I describe the more we Europeans cut our own defence investment the more we will be forced to rely on the Americans.

However, to succeed NATO will need the support of all its members if it is going to pull Smart Defence off. The economic crisis calls for far greater defence solidarity than before, the reverse is happening in Europe. That is not absolve the Yanks. Americans talk much about a single transatlantic defence market and cheaper defence procurement.  However, the US Congress seems to think that is simply ‘American’ for making the Europeans buy American and experience of American-led defence projects has been disastrous.  Washington will need to up its game.

In other words if NATO leaders at Chicago fail to support Smart Defence with real political leadership, including not a small amount of personal political risk for some of them, Smart Defence will end up littering the corridors of failing power like all the other ‘smart’ initiatives to date. And, given the pace of change in the world, this could be our last chance to get it right.  Give NATO the tools and let the new NATO show it can deliver. 

Being smart is never that easy. If indeed it was Admiral Lord Fisher who voiced that famous quip then it took place in the midst of the Anglo-German naval arms race one hundred years ago prior to the First World War. Of course the British found a uniquely British solution to the lack of money for building very large battleships (super-deadnoughts) which proved yet again just how defence smart we Brits can be. The government wanted six, the loyal opposition four - so we compromised on eight!

Smart Defence; we ran out of money and had a think…for once. Hasta la vista, baby!

Julian Lindley-French

How Much Europe Are the Dutch Willing to Pay For?

Alphen, the Netherlands. 24 April. Half-time in the Eurozone Crisis. Last week I was attacked for lacking European zeal, whatever that is. The attacker was one of those pretend think-tanks that sit in the EU’s Brussels nest with mouths agape pleading to be fed by their ‘parent’ Europeans institutions just so they can tell said institutions what they want to hear. Brussels group-think and the fawning sycophancy of much of Europe’s intellectual community goes a significant way to explain how and why the Euro-Aristocracy (national leaders and the Brussels EU elite) have led we the European people into this mess. The key question is evident in this week's fall of the Dutch government; how much Europe are the Dutch (and other northern and western European taxpayers) willing to pay for? 

Tomorrow I fly off to Madrid which is very much at the sharp end of the Eurozone crisis with the Spanish people facing an uncertain and painful future. Here in the Netherlands the government fell ostensibly over the need for further cuts in public spending to meet Eurozone debt limits. However, lurking in the Dutch political shadows is a much more existential question; how much I as a Dutch taxpayer should pay to keep Spain and the other indebted Eurozone countries afloat?

Let me take Spain first. A proud, decent, noble people are facing the fight of their lives if they are to recover from the financial and economic crisis that has enveloped them. Youth unemployment is now over 50%, a level that simply cannot be sustained for long without profound social instability. Yes, one can blame successive Spanish (and Greek, Italian and Portuguese) governments for spending too much but that was the promise of EU membership – invest in your economies and you will be under-written by the rich northern and western Europeans and in time we all will benefit from a European super economy. That ‘contract’ is now broken.

Flip back some fifteen hundred kilometres north to my village here in the Netherlands. People here are angry because they feel they are being conned. They sense instinctively that their political leaders are misleading them about the depth and the extent of the Eurozone crisis. In the absence of honest leadership there is now a very real danger that Europe’s political middle will fail and that the ensuing political vacuum will be occupied by the political extremes of left and right. This weekend some 18% of French voters opted for the far right Front National in the first round of the French presidential elections.

People here also suspect that one of the real reasons for the cuts in what is by European standards a relatively healthy Dutch economy is to create a massive contingency reserve to keep economies afloat such as Spain’s when the second-half of the Eurozone crisis shortly kicks off under the renewed attacks of the bond markets. That reality was implicit in last week’s demand for more money to prop up Europe’s ailing currency by the distinctly French boss of the IMF, Christine Lagarde. It was also the reason US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said no, Europe, he said, must do more. At least he was being honest.

And it is this issue of honesty that is at the heart of Europe’s growing political crisis. Indeed, I am tired of being lied to in the name of Europe. The simple truth is that if the Euro is to be saved transfers from the northern and western European taxpayer will need to be enormous and to last for decades.

As for my European ‘zeal’ it remains what it always was; a belief in a strong Europe of nation-states tightly aligned in alliance. I have never believed in a federal European super-state and never will. I simply do not trust Europe’s political elite enough to let them loose in my name and yet so far from me that democratic accountability all but ceases – the very essence of a federal Europe. That would be taxation without accountability and that is how we ended up in this appalling place in the first place. And yet that is the choice which we Europeans now face.

What is needed is a European Marshall Plan similar to that the Americans funded at the end of World War Two to rebuild Europe’s war-torn economy. Treat me like a grown up and I would support such a plan but only if the Euro-Aristocracy a) come clean about the cost; and b) and show me a plan that could work. The cost of supporting Spain and the others will be such that public services in the Netherlands will be profoundly affected – be it health, education or defence – and for a very long time. So, just be honest about that. Thus far all the Euro-Aristocracy have done is to pour my good money after bad in a failed effort to stabilise Greece whilst trying to hide from me both the severity of the challenge and the paucity of thinking and planning at the top.

Cuts are of course inevitable in a growth-free economy but some cuts make more sense than others. The first thing I would cut would be some of those silly, pretend think-tanks in Brussels which have too often substitute prejudice for analysis and help turn challenge into disaster. As for me I am a real European precisely because I am prepared to face facts. I am not, however, any longer prepared for the Brussels federal Europe fantasy.

Julian Lindley-French

The Comprehensive Approach: Groundhog Day?

Wilton Park, England. 20 April. For the past few days I have been acting as Rapporteur for a large conference on enhancing and improving civil-military interaction in crises – the so-called Comprehensive Approach. The fifty heavy pages of notes I have before me testify to the intense nature of the debate and the challenge of writing the conference report. Over a decade of attending such conferences I have often felt like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day; forced to attend the same conference over and over, albeit with different people ‘discovering’ the same revealed truth and coming to the same ‘solutions’. Thankfully, that will change – either we once and for all get this stuff right or we will soon lose. And it is this focusing of minds that gives me some limited grounds for limited optimism.

The world is changing, Western influence is declining and with it a self-appointed luxury to experiment with security. Eleven or so years ago I attended a similar conference in Washington. It was prior to 911 and I remember being struck by two things. First, anything was possible – this was America’s moment, and by extension that of the West. Second, all problems looked like a nail and thus needed a sharp hammer in the form of the American military. Now, talk to capitals and nothing is possible, the end of the West is nigh and all problems look like jelly for which our militaries are useless. This shift is not just a function of relative economic (and thus power) decline but the contemporary influence in government of the counter-terrorism and/or humanitarian community who see every conflict as of a terrorism and/or humanitarian nature - jelly.

Frankly, given the world it would be stupid for Western militaries to forget about winning wars. There will be big wars in this big century and military fighting power must not be sacrificed simply to make the civil-military interface work. That would be simply fighting the last war better. What is needed rather is strategic common sense and a new balance between the two.  Indeed, as strategy gets bigger and resources fewer the need for synergy-led partnerships both between states and across the peace community will only grow.

For all that it beggars belief that ten years into the Comprehensive Approach many key people still refuse to get the vital importance of an effective civil-military interface. At the strategic level capitals and institutions (EU, NATO, UN etc.) talk endlessly about the need for ‘high-level buy in and adequate resources but never really confront the shortfalls. At the operational level there is still too much inertia behind the [US] military desire to focus only upon killing people and breaking things. In a recent planning conference in Afghanistan a friend of mine had “to start from scratch” with senior United States Marine Corps officers and explain the very basics of the Comprehensive Approach and why integrated civ-mil planning might be just be a useful thing to do. Thankfully, this does not extend to all branches of the US military nor all militaries. The British in Task Force Helmand have had the value of a real civil-military partnership knocked into them through painful experience. With the end of major combat operations in Afghanistan scheduled for end 2014 the instinct will be for many Western (particularly European) powers to hunker down rather than engage. If that happens when the West awakes not only will it find itself to have been fatally eclipsed but all the corporate memory of shared best and not so best practice across a host of civil-military operations will have been lost.

Judgment and action is therefore of the essence. NATO is critical to this and much good work is being done particularly by SHAPE (NATO’s strategic military command headquarters) to bring key civilians and military together as part of a new mechanism for interfacing with similar planning and command structures in other serious international institutions – both governmental and non-governmental. However, NATO’s Brussels headquarters needs to get its act together.  In spite of Secretary-General Rasmussen’s clear instruction to implement civil-military training across NATO HQ he has been by and large ignored. There has been neither a report on progress, nor real resources assigned to the task.  Tellingly, the project was placed in the charge of a junior official in the personnel office (of all places).

Therefore, if NATO’s May Chicago Summit is be more than another glorifed and expensive talk-fest the Secretary-General must get a grip of the Comprehensive Approach, inject real energy into NATO’s own efforts and then reach out to critical partners by once and for all by searching systematically for best practice across the civilian and military community. Only then will there be any chance of real unity of effort and purpose in Afghanistan’s transition. Any later and frankly it is too late. One place to start may be his own Copenhagen where the Danes are doing excellent, practical work. No theology; just getting the right people to do the right job irrespective of whether they wear a uniform or not.

This conference was indeed just a little different which means it could finally be the last time I attend it. A safe world needs a strong West and a strong West must champion effective civil-military partnerships.

Julian Lindley-French