Vor You Tommy Ze Var Ist Ofer?

Alphen, The Netherlands. 7 August.  Those of you of a certain vintage will remember those flinty, somewhat silly British war movies of the 1950s.  The story line was always roughly the same; a plucky British soldier, invariably called Tommy, armed only with a broken toothbrush, elastic band and a piece of chewing gum would, after suffering much adversity, defeat an entire Wehrmacht division.  At some point in the storyline Tommy would invariably and temporarily be captured by some cartoon-cutout German who would invariably utter the immortal line, “Vor you Tommy ze var ist Ofer”.  As we descend into the Euro abyss reading the German Kommentariat I am tempted to say some are at it again.  Britain, the line goes, has no alternative but to accept the German view of Europe, so why can the silly British not see it? 

Part of it is understandable frustration that in the midst of the Eurozone crisis the age-old issue of Britain and Europe has again come to the fore.  Equally, in spite of my huge respect for modern Germany the Kommentariat also reflect a German tendency to believe that what is good for Germany is good for Europe.  Thus, to the Kommentariat pursuit of the German national interest is known as ‘European integration’, pursuit of the British national interest ‘blackmail’. 

Poor little Britain, the line goes, is lost in a long-dead past, and wallowing in misplaced schadenfraude at the travails of the Eurozone.  However, soon broke Britain will break up and have no alternative but to accept the German idea of ‘Europe’.   The more sophisticated members of the Kommentariat recognise that such views are rather silly but worry that moves towards political union could see Britain step inexorably towards an EU exit.  This could do immeasurable damage, not least to Germany’s leadership of Europe. The less sophisticated simply try to shame the British into acquiescence suggesting the country with the world’s fifth or sixth largest real economy and one of the most capable armed forces has no alternative but to abandon national sovereignty in the name of ‘Europe’.  Some even suggest that Britain is responsible for the Eurozone crisis for not having joined the Euro!
 

The Kommentariat reflect a basic political division between the two countries. The German view of ‘Europe’ is a potent mix of romanticism and realism, whilst the British view (as much as there is one) is entirely pragmatic.  Moreover, whilst the rest of Europe by and large accept the German model of Europe, mainly to get their hands on German taxpayer’s money, the British steadfastly refuse. 

For the British ‘Europe’ simply costs too much and could soon cost a lot more.  Britain ‘enjoys’ a huge trade deficit with the rest of the EU, and transfers £4 ($6) to the rest of Europe for every £1 ($1.5) it gets back.  Indeed, the only year Britain enjoyed a net benefit was 1977, at the time of the last in-out British referendum – now there’s a surprise.

The British, or to be more precise the City of London, also provide a convenient scapegoat for the Kommentariat to avoid a simple truth; the problem is the Euro itself.  By extension London must not only be tamed but the British made to pay for a crisis not of their making if the German taxpayer is to be protected.    

However, the ultimate silliness of the Kommentariat is to pretend Britain has no alternative.  It is simply madness to think that a country the size, capability and creativity of Britain could not make its own way in the world.  If the Kommentariat wants proof of that look no further than the London Olympics.  The Games demonstrate again something the Kommentariat really should have learnt by now; that the British when galvanised can be world-beaters.  If only Britain’s defeatist elite could see what the British people instinctively see.  Indeed, if there is a dangerous British malaise it is the void between Britain’s vacuous leaders and its people.

However, the Kommentariat is right about one thing; Europeans must work together at this most dangerous of moments. Certainly, Britain must do nothing to make this crisis worse than it already is.  It is a shame then that silly talk of political union so blights effective, pragmatic crisis management.  Over time London and Berlin need a new start but the perpetual belittling of Britain by the Kommentariat makes that hard.    

There is nothing that irritates the Kommentariat more than British commentators using World War Two as a political metaphor – so here goes.  During the September 1944 Battle of Arnhem surrounded and vastly out-numbered British paratroopers were offered surrender terms by the Germans.  “I am awfully sorry, old chap”, came the reply. “We simply haven’t the room to take you all.  Is there anything else?” 

Julian Lindley-French

Australia Who?

Alphen, The Netherlands. 6 August.  This is getting too easy.  Whatever happened to the Dame Ednas of world sport?  Each Olympics the Australian and British Sports Ministers have a bet as to which of the two countries will gain the most medals.  This is traditionally preceded by a lot of empty Aussie talk of sporting supremacy. Don't worry, we British are tolerant of little countries with big egos.  The loser, Senator Kate Lundy of Australia, will have to don a Team GB shirt and row the Olympic course, for lost she has...again!  Last year England stuffed Australia at cricket in Australia, and now Team GB is giving the Aussies another hiding.

So, just for the record as of today Great Britain sits 3rd in the Olympic table with 37 medals of which 16 are gold, 11 bronze and 10 bronze.  Australia sits (forgive the titter) 24th in the table with 1 gold, 12 silver and 7 bronze.  A few too many tinnies, eh mate? 

Australia who?

Julian Lindley-French    

Euro-Realism 3: Defending Europe

Alphen, the Netherlands. 3 August.  In one of those deliciously Anglo-French moments this week President Hollande took a swipe at the London Olympics and David Cameron.  Stung by Bradley Wiggin’s Tour de France Champs Elysee victory Hollande said, “The British have rolled out a red carpet for French athletes to win medals. I thank them very much for that”.  It was also a calculated riposte to Cameron’s suggestion that the “red carpet” would be rolled out for French economic refugees seeking to escape Hollande’s tax hikes.  It would be easy to leave the Franco-British relationship at that – a tragi-comic little battle over whose declining influence is the greater.  In fact the London-Paris axis is Europe’s only true strategic defence relationship and thus critical to the future defence of Europe.  As Europe heads inexorably towards the coming Euro mega-crisis cross-channel defence relations will become more not less important and must be preserved at all costs. The political realism inherent to the relationship acts as strategic insurance against the woolly ideology of ‘Europe’ that has fathered the current disaster.

Therefore, the French-inspired decision to open up the 2010 Franco-British Defence and Security Co-operation Treaty to others appears all the more strange and could well mark the beginning of the end of this vital pact. Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said France was not prepared to have a defence relationship with Britain that was separate from other European allies.  Strangely, Philip Hammond his British counterpart, went along with this.  The defence relationship is now at the mercy of Eurozone chaos.  The timing could not have been worse. 

Up to now London and Paris had shown both sense and restraint by keeping the two distinct.  At this most sensitive of moments the move will certainly reinforce suspicions on the British right that the pact was a French plot to weaken NATO and sucker the British into what they see as the French-inspired EU Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP).  Indeed, Hammond’s acquiescence looks to all intents and purposes as a political sleight of hand – give the French what they think they want knowing full well that in time it will destroy it. 

The only possible practical argument for this decision is that most big, complex defence procurement projects are multi-national rather than bi-national, and that Germany and Italy have been pressing to be included.  However, not only is that wrong; Britain and France share several major projects, it also wilfully misses the point of the 2010 pact.  In any case, multilateral structures already exist and they are failing.  Consequently, the pact will now become EU defence-lite…and fail.

This is exactly what happened to the 1998 St Malo Declaration which was meant to herald a new dawn in Europe-centric defence co-operation between Britain and France.  However, St Malo was never given enough time to mature into a trusting strategic partnership.  Rather, the Germans and others sought the early transformation of St Malo into the failed European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) because inclusivity was judged more important than credible capability.  Subsequently, not only did the Franco-British strategic defence relationship falter (and then crash with the 2003 Iraq War) but European defence became mired in the EU’s political and bureaucratic morasse in which it has been stuck ever since.   

The simple fact is that Britain and France are different and neither can afford any more of the strategic political correctness that has done so much to denude Europe of a sound defence.  Britain and France together represent almost 50% of European defence expenditure.  They are Europe’s only two nuclear powers (excluding Russia).  They have by far Europe’s most experienced and capable militaries and best strategic thinkers. 

The British will now move further towards an American-led defence Anglosphere, whilst the Eurozone and European defence will slowly become one and the same pulling each other into the abyss.  The British will never join the Euro and for that reason the defence of Europe must be kept separate from it.  Indeed, the timing of this move makes it even less likely that London will focus real political energy on CSDP. 

Therefore, London and Paris need to pause and for once think together and think strategically.  With the French about to draft a new White Book on defence (Livre Blanc) and the British moving towards the 2015 Strategic Security and Defence Review the Franco-British defence relationship must be seen by both for what it is; the most strategically-dynamic of its kind in Europe that given time can emerge as the central pillar of Europe’s future defence.  Then and only then should the relationship be opened up to others. 

The Franco-British strategic defence relationship must be seen as a long-term partnership above and beyond local and short-term vicissitudes, however severe.  Only then will European security and defence be re-connected to world security and defence, whatever the downstream institutional arrangements that turn power into structure.

Perhaps President Hollande’s concluding Olympic remark may have spoken truth.  “The competition is not over,” he said.  I suspect it never will be.

It is time for Euro-realism.

Julian Lindley-French

Syria’s Olympian Tragedy and the New Middle East

Alphen, the Netherlands.  30 July.  The struggle for Syria is forging a new Middle East.  Summer Olympics are often used by desperate, repressive, time-expired regimes to act repressively.  The Russians invaded Georgia in the midst of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.  Now, the Assad regime is attacking Syria’s largest city Aleppo.  Some estimates suggest up to 200,000 people have already been killed in the war with the UN estimating another 200,000 internally displaced and some 250,000 having fled abroad.  Certainly, the loss of Syria’s biggest city to the diverse anti-regime coalition could mark the beginning of the end for President Assad and his Alawite-dominated minority government.  Such is the level of outside interference that the simple truth is that none of us know when and how this will end.  The only thing that can be said with any certainty is that the Baathist Syrian state is already dead.  How the corpse is disposed of could well decide the future shape and ‘balance’ of the new Middle East. 

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Al-Muallem flew to Tehran Sunday to seek more Iranian support.  For Tehran Syria is critical in their efforts to construct an anti-Israeli coalition that they hope will surround Israel.  Republican US Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, speaking in Jerusalem on Sunday, as part of a strangely amateurish foreign policy venture, called for the strong US defence of Israel and said that preventing Iran obtaining nuclear bombs would be his “highest national security priority”.

   

The Free Syrian Army is being supported by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and to some extent Turkey.  This not only reflects the split within Islam between Shia and Sunni, it also reflects the uneasy balancing act between Arab, Persian, Kurd and Turk that plays out across the region and the struggle for influence and supremacy over what it now the new Middle East.

The new Muslim Brotherhood government in Cairo will be a key actor.  Indeed, the true litmus test for Egypt’s future foreign policy orientation will be the fate of Cairo’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel.  Any linkage Egypt makes between the struggle of the Palestinians and the struggle in Syria could well decide Cairo’s relationship with Israel.

All of this means that Israel faces layers of uncertainty on its borders unparalleled since 1967 and much of it beyond Tel Aviv’s control.  Lebanon is being daily more destabilised by the Syrian struggle by allegiances for which local borders are meaningless.  With some 1000 Syrian refugees a day now crossing from Syria into Jordan the Hashemite Kingdom is again being destabilised. 

Israel’s nightmare is to be surrounded to the north and east by Iranian-backed proxies with Hezbollah to the fore and to the south by a Hamas-led Palestinian Authority and a hostile regime in Cairo.

In such an event Iran’s nuclear bomb would not be used to directly threaten Israel but rather to guarantee a free hand for Iran to build its anti-Israeli coalition.  As ever the Palestinians are again being used again for the wider designs of others.  It is a role into which they seem forever to have been cast.

And then there is the grand strategic struggle.  Syria is on the new front-line of the new geo-politics.  Yesterday’s decision by Moscow to refuse to permit a search of any ship flying Russia’s flag en route to Syria simply demonstrated the same old-fashioned thinking in Moscow that led to the 2008 invasion of Georgia.  However, the West’s reluctance to intervene on humanitarian grounds is not simply due to Russian and/or Chinese intransigence.  There are profound concerns about the impact and cost of such an intervention and how it would influence a post-Assad government, the wider region and the dangers associated with injecting Western forces into the Middle East cauldron, particularly after such a bruising experience in neighbouring Iraq and over-the-hill Afghanistan.

The simple truth is that the only option available to the world’s real democracies (the conceptual West) is concerted and systematic diplomatic and humanitarian pressure.  Given that the West must focus policy on Syria and Syrians.  Now that the Annan peace plan is dead the concerted aim must be to decouple as much as possible the conflict from the regional and global issues that are so clouding it and put all efforts into finding an early and durable solution for Syrian people.  Only then and only in time might a successor regime emerge in Damascus that is neither a threat to itself or others, but there is no guarantee.    

The simple truth is that this struggle has so many players that anyone offering a clear view can only do so from the perspective of ignorance or bias. 

As the world loses itself in an Olympian dream a nightmare is awakening.  It is time to wake up!

Julian Lindley-French

OIympic London

Alphen, The Netherlands.  27 July.  Nineteenth century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli once described London as the modern Babylon.  Today, the Games of the XXX Olympiad begin in London.  Over five weeks both the Olympic Games and the Paralympics will, to employ one of the many Olympic cliches now in the starting blocks, shine the light of the world on Britain’s capital city.  What London will it reveal?

In a sense it was entirely appropriate that London was awarded the Olympics and not Britain.  For a long-time now a settlement founded by the Romans between AD 43 and 50 has been a city-state within a state.  This old, great city now has a population of over 9 million people, which according to the 2011 national census released last week grew by some 800,000 over the past decade and probably many more.  Today, London contains over 20% of the UK’s total population.

London’s economic and corporate stats are simply stunning.  London contributes some 17% of Britain’s total GDP, with an economy roughly the size of Sweden, Belgium and Russia.  It is home to the European headquarters of 35% of the world’s largest companies, many of them Olympic sponsors.  65% of Fortune’s Global 500 companies base their operation centres in London with more foreign banks represented than any other world city.  London is thus the very symbol of globalisation – for good and ill. 

Like many Britons my feelings for London are profoundly ambiguous.  Naturally, I am proud of what this city has come to represent as a beacon of freedom during war and a world power in its own right.  And yet much of its wealth was founded on oppression and its under-regulated banks have done much to tarnish the reputation of London and done much damage to the wider British economy.

And yet this is the paradox of London.  The British Government might pretend it will act to tighten regulation over Mammon, but in reality it is Mammon which runs the British Government.  London’s financial clout is far too important for a government desperate for tax revenues in a depression.  This week it was announced that year-on-year the British economy had shrunk by 0.7% by the end of Q2 2012.  Thus, the benighted banks will receive no more than a slapped wrist for their many manipulations, the LIBOR scandal being but the latest and probably by no means the last.

However, it is London’s over-bearing political influence that is perhaps most profound.  London long ago subjugated England and turned a green and pleasant land into a sometimes quaint, sometimes fractured hinterland.  The little countries on London's periphery have retreated into the fantasies of faux self-government replete with myth and legend.  Indeed, the Scots pretence that they can gain pretend independence if they press the Braveheart button will only reveal further the true power in the land - London.  Scotland the Brave will forever be Scotland the Broke without London.

Having vanquished the rest of Britain a new battle is being fought by London and over London.  On one side of the front-line stand those who see London as the champion of free-market globalisation.  Capitals flows are their weapons of choice, their aim to make London as attractive as possible to as much foreign capital as possible wheresoever its provenance and however ill-gotten a gain.  Leading the assault on the City walls is the European Commission at the head of a medieval assembly of European regulation barons.  At heart this struggle for London is one between Anglo-Saxon-led free-marketeers and continental statists. It is a struggle that has already seen many continental free market refugees arrive in London like latter-day Huguenots.

The struggle even takes a physical form.  The new high-speed rail link through the Channel Tunnel to Paris, Brussels and shortly beyond is a physical manifestation of attempts by continental Europeans to forever tie London’s destiny and that of Britain to their own, which is unlikely to be a happy one.  And yet, even though that great old River Thames which has for two millenia defined London flows to the East it rises in the West.  In this age of electronic capital it is ultimately the West, South and far East where London sees it destiny.  Globalisation will prevail.  Yes, European markets matter but the greater the effort by Brussels to tether London the more likely it will break free.  At this defining point in ‘Europe’s’ destiny one thing is clear, London is with them but not of them, to paraphrase Churchill’s great dictum about Britain and Europe.

So, in a sense, the Olympics and London are made for each other.  For, if the Olympics these days represents the place where global capital meets global sport, the London Olympics represents the global capital that pays for Olympic sport.

Citius, Altius, Fortius!

Julian Lindley-French 

Euro-Realism 2: How Safe is My Money?

Alphen, The Netherlands.  25 July.  Here we go again. Lucullus, in Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens (spot the irony) warns, “This is no time to lend money, especially upon bare friendship without security”. As a Dutch tax-payer that warning carries little irony as billions of my hard-earned tax Euros and those of my fellow tax-payers have already vanished down the black hole of a failing currency – either in direct transfers or by printing money that I will forever have to underwrite.  No wonder the Dutch political elite have decided to go AWOL and that this is a good time NOT to have a government.  

This week’s statement by rating agency Moody’s, a Dark Lord of the Market Universe, that the AAA borrowing status of Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands is now on notice thus comes as no surprise.  Indeed, in spite of German protests it strikes me as plain common sense as the sums of my money needed to save the benighted Euro become ever more astronomical.  “Even if such an event [a Greek exit from the Euro] is avoided, there is an increasing likelihood that greater collective support for other Euro area sovereigns, most notably Spain and Italy, will be required”.  The statement goes on; “The burden will likely fall most heavily on more highly-rated member-states [i.e. me] if the Euro area is to be preserved in its current form”. 

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaüble thinks Greece now incapable of reform and yet this week the so-called troika; the IMF, European Central Bank (ECB) and European Commission arrived in Athens to assess Greek ‘eligibility’ for another €31.5 billion ($38.1bn) of my money.  This is the 'last' tranche of an €130bn ($157.4bn) bail out that apparently I agreed to last March.  Although the Greeks have managed to trim €17bn ($20.5bn) from their national debt to bring it down from 160% of GDP to 132% it is nothing like enough.  Now, Athens has stalled.  Greece has promised to reduce it budget deficit to below 3% of GDP by the end of 2014.  In 2011 the Greek overspend was the equivalent of 9% of GDP.  Clearly, the 3% target is pure Greek drama as Athens is now behind with its spending cuts as the Greek economy shrinks faster than planned.  More importantly, reports from within the all-mighty German Central Bank (Bundesbank) indicate that Berlin now accepts Greece’s exit from the Eurozone as inevitable which means all my money will be lost.  And yet Athens may demand another €50bn ($60.5bn).

On to Spain.  As the value of Spanish government debt plunges Spanish banks are beginning to crack with some €250bn ($302.7bn) in government bonds in their vaults, some 30% of Spain’s national debt.  The ECB has already told me that I ‘promised’ €100bn ($121.1bn) of my money to pump into Spain’s banks, even as the Spanish take their money out and put it all in German banks – so much for solidarity.  Indeed, Spanish banks have lost 3% of their deposits in recent weeks, leading them to take a further €106bn ($128.3bn) of my money via the ECB or some 9.5% of their total borrowing. 

My money is also being used for similar purposes in Ireland and Portugal and it is fast reaching a point where the indirect transfers of my money via the ECB must be replaced by direct transfers of my money via the Dutch, German and other governments.  And now I hear that Italy, the world’s third biggest debtor, may also need enormous chunks of my money, I must be incredibly rich.

Sadly, I am not rich.  Rather, I am being asked, no forced to bankrupt myself, to risk all for which I have worked so hard for so many years and to end my life a pauper simply to fund permanently failed southern European economies and an absurd piece of political adventurism in the name of a European solidarity that exists only in the minds of the Euro-Aristocracy who have enriched themselves in the name of Europe. 

The simple fact is that whatever the economic and political shape of Europe the state institutions of southern European countries are simply not strong enough to withstand the shock of reform needed to ween them off my money.  There are thus three questions I want the politicians who put me in this mess to answer.  First, how much is saving the Euro worth?  Second, how much would the break up of the Euro cost?  Third, (and most pressing) when is this going to end…and how?

How safe is my money?  The one thing I will never get is an answer.

Julian Lindley-French

NATO: Connected Forces, Connected Minds?

Alphen, The Netherlands.  23 July.  NATO must contend with two competing and contending inner-realities: a schism in Alliance strategic culture and concept, driven by deepening divisions over the world view and the future of the Euro; and the austerity-driven need for shrinking armed forces to work ever more closely together in a world in which the balance of power is tipping against the West.  It will not be an easy balance to strike.  Forever in search of said new balance NATO has launched the Connected Forces Initiative or CFI.  However, like most things NATO whilst the idea is good real questions remain as to the extent the member nations will really grip the challenge.  The bottom-line is this; the only way CFI can succeed is to be radical in both thought and act.  In effect, CFI is seeking what I call ‘organic jointness’; forces that not only act as one, but think as one.    

The Oxford English Dictionary describes “organic” as "an organised structure within a cell". Today that means an entirely new way of thinking about the relationship between the world, armed forces, technology, the societies they serves and. above all, ideas.   The specific challenge concerns how small military 'producers' meet their security and defence obligations in a very large and unstable 'market' in which the defining feature is and will be friction and turbulence and the defining factor cost.

'Connectivity' is the key. Indeed, ‘connectivity’ must become NATO’s driving mantra because the force most connected will be the force most likely to strike a balance between effectiveness and efficiency.  However, this in turn will require a complete change in mind-set amongst political and military leaders, particularly in Europe.  European armed forces can no longer compete on mass and quantity and NATO can thus no longer simply flood the ‘market’.  Rather, the Alliance needs to be able to make intelligent choices and identify critical points in the ‘market’ over which it can and must exert influence given challenges that will range from state failure to state conflict and all that lurks in between. 

In Europe a defence planning Rubicon has been crossed and yet too many military leaders talk as though this is a temporary blip before their return to greatness.  Indeed, given cuts to NATO Europe forces that is on average some 25% since 2008 European armed forces no longer have the size to 'think' as separate countries, let alone act as separate services.  To be properly connected armed forces will need a radical, unified concept of how best to a) exploit the five dimensions of twenty-first military effect - air, land, sea, cyber and space; b) recognise that a new inner-relationship must be sought with the US; and c) inject some real meaning into the woeful non-relationship with the EU.  That will require a NATO that can re-conceive of itself as a critical strategic node or hub at the core of a web of real strategic partnerships the world over with NATO Standards which promote effective ways of working acting as the Alliance’s core ‘product’.   This will be no easy task for an Alliance that still remains too much of a self-licking lollipop.

The connectivity revolution must start within the Alliance.  Critically, new thinking will be needed if the 'corporate memory' that has been built up so painfully over the past decade is to be properly exploited rather than shelved as lessons-learned and then lost. To that end NATO must far better, scientifically and systematically exploit exercising, training and education.  Exercising is a key but woefully ill-exploited change agent.  Too often the testing of concepts, experimentation and the taking of risk it implies is avoided in favour of of the formulaic and disconnected rehashing of the already known.

However, it is the connectedness of minds that will define CFI.  Transformed defence education is pivotal to CFI.  Indeed, for CFI to work there must be a much tighter relationship between the knowledge base, research, defence education and action based on an Alliance-wide defence education concept that both empowers the learner and ends the box-ticking culture that so bedevils defence academies.  In other words, learning must also become outcomes-based, life-long and enduring based on Alliance-wide education standards.  

Organic Jointness is thus at the heart of the Connected Forces Initiative built on the principle of connectivity.  The realisation of such a goal will demand a radical commitment to force quality that goes way beyond the rehearsed rhetoric of past NATO initiatives.  Things really are different now and unless the Alliance actively promotes the rigorous development of comparative advantage in thinking, concepts, technology and, above all, people it really will in time fade into irrelevance.   

NATO: connected forces, connected minds. 

Julian Lindley-French