The Anglosphere: Two Hundred Years On

Alphen, the Netherlands, not far from Waterloo. June 18. Two hundred years ago today US President James Madison declared war on the British Empire and the War of 1812 began. The war can be thus summarised; the British became ever so slightly miffed at repeated American attempts to interfere in British Canada, especially as London was in the process of casting a certain vertically-challenged Corsican into history and eventually packing him off to see out his days on ‘one of our islands’ in the South Atlantic.

As a way of drawing London’s irritation to American attention the Royal Navy began to put what the Americans called a navy in its place. Eventually, the British had to burn down the White House, making them ever so popular in the Mid-West, to teach the Americans a lesson about strategic etiquette and London and Washington lived happily ever after. The Anglosphere was thus born. And, apart from the odd bit of tiresome American behaviour, the Anglosphere has not only survived but flourished with the American and British empires now united in common purpose.

What of the Anglosphere today? Nominally, it is comprised of America, Australia, Britain and Canada, with a few hangers-on such as New Zealand and could in time extend informally to the likes of India and South Africa and maybe a few others. In other words it comprises the remnants of a new long dead empire. Is it really a political and strategic option for the states concerned?

The Americans are not the power they were and will need like-minded allies in the twenty-first century as their power and influence begins to wane. The British, who had their last superpower day on 6 June, 1944, are led by people who by and large do not believe in Britain or its people and who have done very nicely thank you very much out of the EU gravy train whilst handing over much of Britain’s national sovereignty to it for little in return. However, in as much as the strategically-illiterate and inept Westminster Village ‘thinks’ big about anything these days, even they might be just beginning to realise that Athens has more influence over ‘Europe’ than London. Tying Britain’s future to a Euro-infected EU over which it has no influence whatsoever is thus the political equivalent of escaping the doomed Titanic in a lifeboat and then deciding that the safest and only course of action is to tie said lifeboat to the sinking wreck. Australia, and the other Asia-Pacific ‘members’, is only attracted to the Anglosphere as a form of insurance policy against a potentially strategically volatile China. Canada? Well, look at a map.

Equally, no-one should be under any illusions how difficult it would be to make the Anglosphere work. The Americans would see it only as a grouping that could add some political legitimacy and minor military capability to ease their strategic over-stretch as they ‘pivot’ towards Asia-Pacific. If NATO is not politically and militarily reinvested continental Europe will be effectively lost to the Americans as a meaningful group of political and military allies. The British who are calling for it tend to come from the ‘anything but Brussels’ wing of the Conservative Party. Swapping dependence on an illiberal, undemocratic bureaucracy in Brussels for dependence on a dangerously dysfunctional Washington prompts one to suggest beware what you wish for. Australia simply wants reassurance that the future in Asia-Pacific will not be exclusively Chinese. Canada? Well, look at a map.

For all that the Anglosphere may slowly and informally emerge as a forum of strategic influence much like, albeit more effective than, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) which is fast becoming the home of the strategic anti-West. Indeed, as power becomes more instable in the world it is also becoming more informal.

The advantage of the Anglosphere over the SCO is that its foundation would be the shared economic and financial model which constitutes the real Special Relationship and, of course, a similar world and cultural view. However, it would probably never amount to more than that.

On June 18, 1815 the Duke of Wellington gave the ever tiresome and uppity French a sound thrashing in a field just off the main E19 Brussels-Mons highway in what regrettably later became Belgium. Wellington’s victory confirmed Britain as the world’s superpower for a century. Paradoxically, the Americans also confirmed Britain’s supremacy. In 1823 the US announced the Monroe Doctrine which stated that any further European attempts to colonize North or South America would be seen as act of aggression. On the face of it Washington’s move seemed a distinctly anti-British move. In fact, it protected Britain’s strategic flank to the west and enabled the British to look south and east with confidence and thus the second British Empire was born.

As for the Anglosphere the first step would be for Her Majesty the Queen to offer the Americans membership of the Commonwealth…if they can learn to behave. If not we British could always burn the White House down again. Just look at a map.

Julian Lindley-French

The Day of Russia or the Day of the Kremlin?

Alphen, the Netherlands. 12 June. Today is the Day of Russia. It marks the moment in 1992 when the Declaration on Russian National Sovereignty was adopted by the Russian Parliament and Russia re-emerged from the wreckage of the Soviet Union. Back then there was much hope both in Russia and the rest of the free world that this enormous, great country would take its place amongst the true democracies of the world. Last week the Russian Parliament confirmed a Kremlin-inspired bill which would increase the maximum fines for breaking laws governing protests by 600% for participants and 1200% for organisers. Yesterday police raided the homes of opposition leaders and removed computers and mobile phones.

It is not just the Russian people who are feeling the iron fist of President-for-Life Putin’s Kremlin. Indeed, the Kremlin's foreign and domestic policies are two sides of the same coin.  Last week Moscow announced that it was reopening three Arctic bases that were mothballed at the end of the Cold War to expand Russia’s military presence in the energy-rich High North. Prior to his re-election then Prime Minister Putin announced a doubling of the Russian defence equipment budget over the next ten years, at a time when the US military faces large defence cuts and European militaries are in meltdown.

Two things are happening. First, the Kremlin is moving to entrench power in the tiny elite that run Russia’s so-called ‘sovereign democracy’. Second, the Kremlin is seeking to mask its assault on Russia’s putative democracy by wrapping itself in the Russian flag. This might appal the sophisticated Muscovites who lead the opposition to President Putin but will doubtless appeal to millions of ordinary Russians who understandably equate ‘democracy’ with the chaos of the 1990s and the corruption of the oligarchs. Order and stability are much cherished in Mother Russia.

June also marks the anniversary of Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union which saw some 23 million Russians perish in the Great Patriotic War and Soviet Russia’s defeat of Nazi Germany. In effect, President Putin is slowly re-inventing Soviet foreign policy albeit somewhat more modestly, with opportunism the central theme.

At one level the Kremlin has the West exactly where it wants it. The Eurozone crisis is rendering the European Union and many of its member-states utterly impotent. Moscow’s only interest in the suffering of the Syrian people is to remind the West that Russia is a player in the Middle East and block any action that it deems injurious to Moscow’s influence. The Kremlin is trying to build an anti-Western alliance with China through the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation and given the need for NATO to re-supply its forces through Russia has the West by the throat over Afghanistan. A divided NATO is also permitting Russia to prevent the much-needed modernisation of the Alliance’s collective defence (although the NATO nations do not need much encouragement).

So, is Moscow winning? Well, no. Although the turmoil of the 1990s seems to be over with mortality rates and life expectancy showing signs of recovery from the dark days of the mid-1990s Russia remains a deeply divided and impoverished society. Moreover, the economy remains dangerously unreformed and dependent on the export of hydro-carbons to fund much of public expenditure which is again growing as the Kremlin re-establishes a system of political patronage not dissimilar to that of the Soviet Union. The irony is that Russian income stems from the very Western economies which the Kremlin continues to insist pose the greatest threat to Mother Russia. Indeed, Russia’s economy is utterly dependent on the West which explains the Kremlin’s use of Gazprom as a front to seek control over critical European economic assets.

This is but one of many paradoxes in the Kremlin’s foreign and security policy that demonstrate the tension between analysis and policy in Moscow. The threat posed to Russia’s Far East by Chinese economic and growing military power is growing. Russia may welcome the humiliation of the West in Afghanistan but it could be left with an even greater Islamist threat to its southern republics. Russia claims to seek a stable Europe and yet moves mobile Iskander M nuclear missiles within range of the High North. Russia seeks a strong relationship with the United States and yet remains an utterly implacable opponent to any Washington-inspired move in the UN Security Council to end the strife in Syria, or indeed Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Some years ago I found myself sitting opposite the Russian Deputy Defence Minister at a NATO-sponsored meeting in southern Germany. Being me I asked the Minister if Russia was a partner in European security or a threat to it. She looked at me quizzically after the interpreter had spluttered and then translated my question. Russia, she said euphemistically, would always have its own interests.

The Kremlin is once again using ‘Russia’ to play its convoluted and complex power games in the name of the state. It all feels terribly Soviet and one can almost see again those old, grey men with their old, grey faces in their expensive furry 'ushankas' standing atop Lenin’s tomb celebrating Soviet military might with their wooden-armed salutes. There was much talk of ‘reset’ recently. Until there is a ‘reset’ in the Kremlin’s old-fashioned thinking expect a difficult time.

The Day of the Kremlin is back.

Julian Lindley-French

Have the British Armed Forces Met Their Waterloo?

Alphen, the Netherlands. 8 June. Winston Churchill once lamented the “Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong, these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history." Reading the speech of British Defence Minister Philip Hammond yesterday to the RUSI Land Warfare Conference I was tempted to say here we go again.

These were the words of a minister given the almost impossible mission to cut the British armed forces irrespective of the changing world beyond Britain’s shores. And yes, the very real danger exists that Britain will compound the profound loss of influence of late in Europe by in effect sacrificing the one tool that gives Britain real influence in the world – the British armed forces.

Now, it would be easy for me to jump on the bandwagon of criticism I can see rolling towards London. In fact Future Force 2020 and Army 2020 might just strike a much-needed balance between strategy, capability and austerity; if that is the politicians hold their nerve and do not again raid the defence budget simply to satisfy the latest adverse press headlines.

Specifically, come the 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review Britain must re-commit to three simple defence strategic principles; sufficient military power to influence a changing US defence strategy, the absolute maintenance of Britain’s position as Europe’s leading military power and the use of military excellence to form strategic partnerships with key Commonwealth partners in and around Asia-Pacific.

Whilst the Hammond speech was couched in the ‘we only recognise as much threat as we can afford’ language so-beloved of this government there was much to commend it. The speech talked of facing the future with adaptable armed forces as part of a ‘Whole Force Concept’ that better integrates regular and reserve forces. This is common sense. However, what the speech lacked was a coherent statement of defence strategy that would provide context. Where is the vision, the level of ambition?

At the politico-military level such strategy would recognise that the shift in US strategy from a land-centric, regional focus to a maritime centric global remit has profound implications for Britain. The ability to work with European allies whilst important offers no alternative to a close defence relationship with the US. The imbalance of effort in Afghanistan demonstrates that under no circumstances should Britain allow itself to become reliant on European allies for effective operations simply to balance the books at home. That would render Britain utterly impotent both politically and militarily.

At the military-strategic level what is needed is a Total Force Concept in which no single service owns land, sea or air. That in turn would require a new vision of military ‘jointness’ to re-establish Britain as a defence radical at the core of a hub of military excellence that preserves and enhances Britain’s ability to lead what might best be termed ‘junior coalitions’, i.e. those that do not involve the Americans.

Here’s the rub; the Royal Navy, Army and the Royal Air Force are developing all the components necessary for the strategic renovation of Britain’s post-Afghanistan armed forces. The Royal Navy’s two super-carriers will afford the British armed forces vital strategic projection for much of this century and help re-cement critical strategic partnerships with the likes of Australia, India and South Africa with whom Britain shares a military heritage. The new Astute nuclear submarines and Type-45 destroyers will enable Britain either to support the US or act as the core of future task forces and battle groups. The RAF’s emerging strategic lift capability will reinforce the strategic reach and re-supply Britain and its allies will need, although important gaps will need to be plugged in command and control capabilities, air-to-ground surveillance and maritime protection. Even though the Army will be reduced from 104,000 to 82,000 by 2020 if the future force is comprised of cutting-edge regiments that can provide the core of a rapidly expandable force that employs properly trained reserves then Britain will be well-served by these reforms.

That is the good news. If, however, Hammond’s speech was simply a return to the hollowed-out force that emerged from the Front-Line First reforms of the 1990s and which were found out by the 2003 Gulf War then Britain’s ability to influence both allies and environments will be nil. Greater reliance on reserves and the private sector for support must mean just that, not the creation of mythical structures that again fail Britain’s young people in uniform when the crunch comes, as it will.

My bet is that Future Force 2020 is too ambitious a target for this strategy-free government. In reality it will be 2025 or even 2030 before all the components are in place and Britain’s armed forces can again play their full role in the defence of Britain’s vital interests in the big twenty-first century. Moreover, there is a very real danger that the corporate memory of recent operations (a key British advantage) will be lost if a more systematic effort is not made to preserve them.

The British armed forces are a strategic brand and to destroy that brand in the name of the here and now would be a mistake that would set Churchill spinning in his grave.

Have the British Armed Forces met their Waterloo? No, not yet, but...

Julian Lindley-French

Montenegro: Why We Must Keep the Door Open

Budva, Montenegro. 7 June. Graham Greene once wrote, “There is always one moment when the door opens and lets the future in”. Here in beautiful Budva the Adriatic laps gently on the beach below my balcony and then stretches away like a carpet of crushed opal with the sun leaping from shard to shard. I have just spent the past two days at the excellent ‘2BS’ (To Be Secure) conference as a guest of the Atlantic Council of Montenegro along with ministers and leaders from across the Western Balkans. In the wake of NATO’s Chicago summit the most profound of questions has hung in the air; will the Western Balkans be given sanctuary within NATO and eventually the EU before the region slides back into dangerous instability?

It is all too easy to slot the Western Balkans into the ‘job done’ box of what now seems an endless conveyor belt of crises. That would be a mistake. As I write the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation has just concluded with China, Russia (and observer Iran) warning the West to keep its hands off the Syrian tragedy just as another massacre is denied by Assad and his cronies. Closer to home Prime Minister Cameron is meeting Chancellor Merkel to discuss the Eurozone crisis and Spain’s imminent banking crash.

At Chicago the one commitment of any substance was the determination to move rapidly towards NATO membership for at least three of the successor states of Yugoslavia; Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia ('Former Yugoslav Republic thereof to keep you Greeks out there happy, although the argument over a name demonstrates the pettiness of many Balkan contentions) and Montenegro. Serbia is of course key to stability in the region and unless Belgrade is happy (something Serbs tend to find hard) the Western Balkans will never be truly stable. 

However, incorporating countries from the region will not come without cost. First, the western Balkans will need financial support for many years to come at a time when most of Europe is mired in dangerous debt. Second, the region still faces a profound challenge from organised crime that too often spills over to blight the rest of Europe. Third, Russia is still prickly about aspirations from countries in the region to join NATO in particular. Fourth, several of the causes of past conflict remain not only unresolved but bubble just below a dormant political volcano that is by no means extinct – Republika Srpska remains unreconciled with Bosnia-Herzegovina and the relationship between Serbia and Kosovo is always a flashpoint. As one senior Montenegran said to me, “true peace will take generations to achieve”.

The bottom-line is this; on balance (and international politics is always ‘on balance’) I have been convinced that NATO’s Open Door must be honoured and quickly. Indeed, with Greece facing possible exit from the Euro there is a very real chance that the instability traditionally associated with this region will spread across the rest of the Balkans. Above all, with Syria burning what hope can we in Europe possibly offer those struggling for the respect of human rights in North Africa, the Middle East or elsewhere if we cannot guarantee stability in this corner of Europe?

There is no question that the Eurozone crisis represents the greatest security threat of the age with Iranian nukes not far behind. However, the danger that the Western Balkans slides back towards war is also very real posing a threat to the stability of Europe at a time of particular instability. The Western Balkans cannot be brushed under some metaphorical (and mythical) security carpet by capitals otherwise engaged.

The next NATO enlargement will take the Alliance into the heart of Balkan instability and must therefore be a model enlargement. Montenegro is small enough and committed enough to make that embrace work. With a population of only 650,000 and having adopted the Euro as the national currency there is no duplicity – either open or subtle – about Montenegro’s ambitions and leanings. Be it security sector reform or democratic control over armed forces Montenegro can show the way for much of the rest of the Western Balkans so that Europe is never again blighted by the obscenity that was the War of Yugoslav Succession in the 1990s.

Europe will not be able to do it alone and the open support of the United States at this conference in the elegant and impressive shape of the US Ambassador Sue Brown was both welcome and necessary. For all the talk of America’s ‘pivot’ to Asia-Pacific it is clear Washington is committed to the Western Balkans and will need to remain so.

Graham Greene was right; this is indeed the moment when NATO’s open door can shine a light on a Balkan future that offers hope not just in Europe but much of the world beyond. In time another door might lead into the EU. Montenegro holds a mirror up to us all and the image I see is not a pretty one.

We must not close the door on Montenegro.

Julian Lindley-French

A Light in the Mire

Alphen, the Netherlands, 3 June. Edward Gibbon, in his masterly Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire wrote ,“all that is human must retrograde if it does not advance”. Having just come back from a two day NATO meeting in the Eternal City one is beginning to see that in the fabric of the people and the place. The fear and frustration is almost palpable. “Why don’t they do something?”, one Roman friend said to me looking skyward to imply a vague vision of our Dear Leaders as Roman Gods. “They are doing something”, I replied. “They are re-arranging deckchairs on the Titanic”. And, if he listened ever so carefully he might hear something else; the acoustic perfume of a distant violin wafting its way from nearby Anzio as Nero fiddles anew.

Our absent without leave leaders last week missed yet another chance to put in place the ten year, multi-billion Euro grand plan that might, just might, save the benighted single currency and stave off not just financial meltdown but save European democracy from those who would rent it asunder in the name of European political union. Even that consummate Euro-Aristocrat, Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank, this week warned that the Euro is fast becoming unsustainable in the absence of decisive action. The markets of course crashed…again!

Crises being like London buses they never come in ones. The US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta suggested in Singapore that by 2020 some 60% of the US Navy will be in the Pacific. What he was saying to all intents and purpose was that America is fast giving up on NATO, the implication being that Europeans are too. I wonder. Asia-Pacific might be ‘where it is at’ in grand strategy these days but as my close friend and former US Ambassador to NATO Robert Hunter rightly points out; the great tectonic fissures of grand political friction will still be found for the foreseeable future on the shores of a powerless Europe in North Africa and the Middle East.

And yet there was a light in the mire this week. There is a famous painting by Canaletto of the Royal Thames Pageant of 1662. At the time Charles II was only two years into his reign and England was slowly recovering from the civil war and Cromwell’s Republic. Charles wanted to show both the majesty and the continuity of monarchy.

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II also went afloat this week.  She has afforded Britain both majesty and continuity during the momentous and revolutionary change that has taken place in the sixty years of her reign which the Diamond Jubilee is celebrating. At times ‘majesty’ has seemed at odds with a Britain in steep decline but precisely because of her sense of duty the Queen has done great service to both her country and much of the world beyond. However, it was not Her Majesty alone that warmed my heart but rather the sight of newly-arrived immigrants and refugees taking the chance to celebrate all things British.

Regular followers of this blog will know my concerns about the impact of hyper-imigration on British society and, in particular, English culture. The political left, which hates all things English, has tried to destroy Englishness through immigration-fuelled multiculturalism, and have by and large succeeded. The political right has used immigration as a way to impose ‘labour market flexibility’ and thus drive down the living standards of ordinary Britons in the name of ‘competitiveness’.

However, the sight of so many immigrants so keen to celebrate Britishness on the occasion of the Pageant gives me hope that one day a new society will emerge that sees itself as being British albeit in a very new kind of way. For that I offer them my heartfelt thanks as they might be shining a light on a future for all.

Contrast change in Britain with change in Europe, and I am now convinced more than ever that Britain and Europe are no longer the same. Behind the Eurozone crisis lurks an enormous EU-British crisis. Europe has no equivalent of the Queen, unless you count that nice Belgian, Mr Rompuy. There is no anchor of stability for Europeans to look to as Europe embarks on what in the next decade will be momentous change. Rather, there is a bunch of uncertain politicians all of whom lack the greatness the moment demands and who are utterly unable to see or grasp the bigger picture which is painting not only their respective destinies but those of their peoples.

My Roman friend also asked me if ‘Europe’ could really collapse. Yes, I said, it could all too easily collapse, because what the Euro crisis has shown is that 'Europe' does not really exist.  Perhaps we need a new 'Europe'.  Any ideas?

By the way it rained on the Queen. Tradition matters.

Julian Lindley-French

Free Speech: The Dangerous Conceits of Elites

Alphen, the Netherlands. 30 May. John Milton in a famous 1644 speech before Parliament during the English civil war famously said, “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties”. There is much debate today about the chronic democratic deficit in the EU, i.e., the failure of political elites to uphold the principles of parliamentary democracy, to listen with integrity to and respond to the reasonable will of a majority of citizens. However, the creeping conceit of political elites is not confined to Brussels. Indeed, it is a phenemenon that is strengthening across Europe, as governments fail to cope with the mess they have created, not least in Britain. Three events have occurred this week in London that reinforce the sense of an elite not just out of touch, but willfully misinterpreting the public mood.

Conceit number one concerns the EU. Justice Minister Ken Clarke said this week that MP’s calling for a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU were “a few extreme nationalist politicians”. And yet, far from being the preserve of a few wild-eyed political mavericks some 90% of the population in a recent poll demanded a so-called ‘in-out’ referendum on membership of an EU that bears no resemblance to the one last voted for in 1975.

Conceit number two concerns the judiciary. Lord Justice Leverson is heading a ravishingly juicy public enquiry into press malpractice. Or, to decribe it more accurately, why successive prime ministers got too close to ‘The Sun’ king, Rupert Murdoch, and how they are justifying it. This week the Education Minister Michael Gove gave evidence and warned against the curtailing of free speech in the name of press controls. Lord Justice Leverson intervened to lecture Gove rather grumpily that he needed no lessons on the importance of free speech. Apparently he does and so do his legal peers. The whole thrust of English law over the past decade or so has been the promotion of political correctness at the expense of free speech. As Gove pointed out; sooner or later free speech offends someone and that on balance it is free speech that should be given the higher priority unless such speech incites hatred or violence.

Conceit number three concerns England’s now draconian race laws which are specifically designed to curb free speech. This week Jacqueline Woodhouse was jailed for twenty-one weeks for a racist rant on the tube (London Undergound). Anyone who has seen her rant on U-tube and her assailing of fellow tube passengers in the most foul and offensive manner can only conclude that she had it coming. Her comments were both a clear incitement to hatred and violence and utterly unacceptable. However, in sentencing her Judge Michael Snow showed just how detached the judicial elite have become from workaday reality in Britain.

Woodhouse said, “I used to live in England, now I live in the United Nations”. This might not be how the elite may see things but go to any pub, or sit on any bus (something I suspect Judge Snow does not do very often) and you will hear perfectly decent people – black and white - expressing similar concerns, albeit thankfully more modestly. The Woodhouse case raises the most profound question that neither the political or judicial elite seem prepared to confront; where does freedom of speech stop and racism begin?

This week the British Government announced that over the past year a further 500,000 plus people entered Britain. Immigration is still out of control and ordinary people have every right to express legitimate concerns about a fundamental failure of policy. And yet racism laws are being used to suppress dissent. 

Living in the political bubble of modern politics, sharing more in common with their fellow European elite members than their own voters and assailed daily by pressure groups, lobbyists and special interests it is all too easy for politicians to retreat into a kind of politically correct la-la land in which ‘the people’ become the enemy – to be manipulated and kept at distance but rarely represented. This retreat into conceit is as much a danger to democracy in Europe as the drive to distance what democratic accountability there is ever further from the voter in the name of political union.

Can any state be called a democracy if free speech is sacrificed in the name of order? That has been long the refrain of dictators as far back as Aristotle. Milton also warned that, “None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but licence”.

Julian Lindley-French

Europe's New German Question

Alphen, the Netherlands. 28 May. Almost sixty years ago to the day the European Defence Community (EDC) Treaty was signed in Paris. Under pressure from an America facing a possible war on two fronts – Korea and Europe the aim was to create a European Army that would see West Germany re-armed to provide manpower for the defence of Europe only twelve years after Nazi troops had marched down the Champs Élysée. The French agreed but only on the condition that German forces were subsumed into a supranational European military force. In a moment of prescience Winston Churchill said of Britain, “we are with them, but not of them”. Nothing changes. In essence the EDC concerned the German question - how to constrain German power and to reassure France. Nothing indeed changes.

The durability of this question was brought home to me during my time at the EU Institute for Security Studies in Paris over a decade ago. The many meetings and conferences I attended on ‘project Europe’ all had the same sub-plot, French elite concerns about Germany and its power, matched only by German elite concerns about Germany and its power. For many years German guilt and French fear was enough to fashion a sort of balance of power. No more.

The late 1980s saw two things happen that would lead us all to the precipice over which we are now staring. German war guilt began to wear off just as German re-unification began to push Germany to the fore. Both then French Socialist President Francois Mitterand and British Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher saw the danger and were profoundly concerned about the power and influence of a united Germany especially given the pending collapse of the Soviet Union.

Typically, Mitterand and Thatcher chose radically different paths. Prime Minister Thatcher sought strategic separateness from Europe and a close relationship with the United States. President Mitterand believed the only way to constrain Germany was via European integration. This was to be achieved first by monetary union, which had first been dreamed up back in the late 1960s, and ultimately political union. The 1991 Maastricht Treaty was meant to see the launch of this grand French plan and the drive towards political union without which monetary union would not only be difficult, but downright dangerous. In then German Chancellor Helmut Kohl Mitterand found an unlikely conservative ally.

However, the French and German elites engineering this great experiment in sovereignty faced three profound dilemmas. First, many ordinary Europeans remained utterly wedded to national identity, not least the French. Second, with the end of the Cold War the moral imperative to extend the EU to the east was enormous, even though ‘widening’ undermined ‘deepening’. Third, Germany championed ‘integration’ but refused to pay for it, just as today. As another senior German said to me at the time, “Germany does not really understand the meaning of solidarity”.

The British response as per usual was utterly idiosyncratic. London said that under no circumstances would it give up national sovereignty and then promptly did so as successive British governments transferred power to Brussels without any semblance of permission from the British people. Today, Britain is in the worst of all Euro-worlds – obligation without influence. Indeed, Europe has rendered the British state virtually powerless to control even its own borders with the possible secession of Scotland pointing to a United Kingdom of little utility nor advantage.

2005 was the moment the slow landslide began towards today’s uber-crisis. French, Dutch, and other voters rejected the proposed Constitutional Treaty that would have established the ‘ever closer union’ that may (just may) have led to effective governance of the single currency. Today, Europe is split in two between southern and eastern Europeans who see ‘Europe’ as a metaphor for wealth transfers from the still reasonably and temporarily rich northern and western Europeans; and German, Dutch and other taxpayers determined to resist what they see as a money grab by the structurally inefficient south and east. Under President Hollande France sits uncomfortably between the two camps.

Beyond possible currency collapse the failure to answer the German question sees Europe today faced with the two great dangers of this European age born of the past; the twinned democracy and sovereignty deficits. Neither the EU nor the EU member-states have the power any longer to act decisively. The capacity to act has been lost down the political black hole that is Brussels. This exacerbates a popular and utterly justifiable impression on the part of the European peoples of a self-serving and incompetent Euro-elite over whom there is little effective political oversight.

There is of course an historical irony to all of this. In 1954 the EDC Treaty failed because France killed it. It was a sovereignty step too far. There is no reason to believe that today would be any different.

Sixty years on history remains as eloquent as ever in Europe and there is still no answer to the German question…simply a new question; empire, union or nothing.

Julian Lindley-French