Scotland: The Die is Cast

Alphen, Netherlands. 16 October.  When crossing the Rubicon to begin the civil war that led to the destruction of the Roman Republic Julius Caesar said, “the die is cast”.  Roman law had it that any Roman army that crossed the small river near Bologna en route to Rome without the permission of the Senate was an act of treachery and must be seen as irreversible. 

Yesterday’s ‘historic’ agreement between British Prime Minister David Cameron and Scottish First Minister Alec Salmond to hold a “legally-binding” referendum on Scotland’s possible independence from the United Kingdom cast the die.  Whatever happens the United Kingdom will never be the same again, not least because of changes to the electoral law in the agreement that extends the suffrage without any say by Parliament.  Some would say that is illegal.

Certainly, a precedent has been established whereby a minority is given superior status over the rest of the UK, although as an Englishman I have long understood that we are second class citizens.  Indeed, the most fundamental change to my country for three hundred years could take place and I am to be denied a voice…again.

And yet for all that I support the Scots right to decide and will honour and respect their decision.  As an avowed democrat I am bound to the logic of my own argument.  What angers me most (and yes I am angry) is that Prime Minister Cameron seems to think it perfectly OK for the Scots to have a referendum that could lead to the dismemberment of my country and yet denies me a referendum on that other Rubicon – the place of the UK in an integrated Europe and the effective end of my state.  The two are clearly linked.  It is breath-taking hypocrisy.

Cameron is taking one hell of a political risk.  Some would say that for once he is leading but any glance at the agreement one can again see that this most lightweight of prime ministers has again been comprehensively out-manoeuvred. Others say that the Scots will never vote for independence as all the mainstream political parties will now join the unionist campaign.  First, that is to pay no respect to the great Scottish people.  Second, there is a long way to go before the end of 2014 when the vote is likely to take place.  Third, expect a lot of other states to start interfering that would love to see London humiliated, not least those on the near-Continent who would like to see the crushing impact this will undoubtedly have on the people of England, Wales and Northern Ireland translated into submission to the future diktat of Brussels DC.

The greatest impact will be on England which represents over 90% of the population of the United Kingdom and where the sense of injustice and a feeling that politicians NEVER listen to their concerns about anything that really matters is growing palpably.  Of course, the London political elite say that the English can vote for Parliament once every five years. Sadly, both government and Parliament are debased currency in England these days and widely seen by the population to have sold the English out left, right and Brussels.

If Scotland votes for independence it must mean independence.  Salmond says that the Bank of England will remain the lender of last resort post-independence and that Scotland would retain the pound.  As an Englishman with Scottish blood in his veins I utterly reject that because what Salmond is in effect saying is that he wants to destroy the UK and get the English to pay for it.  Cameron is so weak that he will likely agree to such nonsense but the simple fact is that if Scotland votes to go then it must pay its own way and the enormous subsidies paid to the Scots by taxpayers in the rest of the UK must end.

Whatever happens Scotland will have to live with an angry, dominant, let-down, resentful and utterly fed-up England and Edinburgh must never forget that even if London too often does.  If Scotland does vote to destroy the United Kingdom (for that is what is implicit in this vote) then I will wish the Scottish people well even if I passionately believe the UK is stronger with Scotland within it and that Scotland does very well out of the UK. 

The die has indeed been cast.  How on Earth have we come to this?

Julian Lindley-French

The Good Ole US of E

Washington DC, US of A 14 October.  It was US President Abraham Lincoln who famously said, “you can fool some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time”.  I wonder.  Writing this I am sitting in the cavernous Edwardian railroadness of Union Station.  This is what an ancient Greek railway station would have looked like had the Athenians got around to turning ideas into practice.  At least it is what a nineteenth century American architect thought an ancient Greek station would amount to.  There is a reason for all this lofty grandeur.  Union Station is but a stone’s throw from the Capitol, which is probably appropriate as it is built on the site of a notoriously rowdy Irish slum.  

This station sat at the very heart of the Union, part of a railway system critical to ensuring the cohesion of an America that spent much of the nineteenth century colonising ‘itself’.  One of the striking aspects of my latest visit to Washington is how many senior Americans think a ‘United States of Europe’ a good thing, particularly think-tankers.

Many Americans (not all) have a disarming tendency to super-impose their own self-image onto others.  This tendency is nowhere more apparent than views about Europe.  The somewhat bizarre award to the EU of the Nobel Prize for Peace (given the many people risking their lives for peace) has heightened a sense in some American minds that the end of the European nation-state is nigh and some latter day Rome might emerge.  There is even some of the growing intolerance one finds in the Euro-Aristocracy of those resisting the ‘irresistible’ for fear of the loss of ancient liberties and because some of us are quite fond of our old countries.  Some even imply xenophobia, much the same way that this terminally politically-correct country infers that anyone concerned about hyper-immigration must by definition be racist.  Above all it shows a dangerously simplistic misunderstanding of Europe.

My own objections to a ‘super-Europe’ reflect the unease of many Europeans already alienated from politics that there is simply no way to make what Messrs Van Rompuy, Barroso, Draghi et al want at all democratic, whatever their manipulations to the contrary to gain more power.  The European nation-state is not the equivalent of an American state and never will be.  Indeed, four of the world’s top ten economies and two of its leading military powers are EU member-states.  There is no common language, no common legal tradition and none of the shared political philosophy essential to the Founding Fathers.  As such there will be no Declaration of Rights and thus very few real checks and balances to restrain an over-mighty bureaucracy made powerful by a crisis much of its own crafting beyond a distant fig-leaf European Parliament that represents only itself.  

My own country Britain is often painted here as a recalcitrant outlier full of political Neanderthals who have spent too long on an island, rather than a great country with a long and proud libertarian tradition from which America inherited its concept of political liberty and for whom many of its citizens have died over the past decade or so.  

What is particularly worrying is how some of the think-tankers seem seduced by powerful EU interests into accepting the intolerant orthodoxy of European integration that views all dissenters as dangerous heretics. The strange (and oft hypocritical) thing is that these people imply the end of European state sovereignty, something they themselves could never imagine being imposed on Americans. 

Where I agree with the Euro-Federalists is that the next ten years will be the crunch for ‘The Project’, as the European Commission calls it, to build a ‘united’ Europe on their terms.  By 2020 the Europe we know could be sliding fast down the trash chute of history to be replaced by ‘Brussels DC’.  The critical moves towards banking, fiscal and political union currently on the table if followed through logically would indeed shift the balance of power decisively against the member-state (and with it democracy) such that it would become a mere rump.     

The EU works best as a form of intense inter-state co-operation in which national parliaments close to the people provide legitimacy and Brussels is there simply to aggregate effectiveness by helping to promote cohesion in those areas of trade, the free movement of goods and people and on some aspects of foreign and security policy where strategic unity of effort and purpose is essential.  It is not a sovereign state.

Americans must at least understand one thing; a US of E would be nothing like the good ole US of A. Certainly, no latter day Rome would emerge, more likely would be a very large Greece.

Julian Lindley-French

Why America Needs a Kennan Moment

Washington DC, USA. 12 October.  US strategist George F. Kennan, a hero of mine, once said, “The best an American can look forward to is the lonely pleasure of one who stands at long last on a chilly and inhospitable mountaintop where few have been before, where few can follow and where few will consent to believe he has been”.  This is an election town at an election moment.  For a foreigner it is a fascinating and frankly uplifting experience to see American democracy in action.  Still, having watched last week’s presidential debate between Obama and Romney from ‘over there’ and last night’s vice-presidential debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan from ‘over here’ I am struck by how poorly all the candidates really understand the fundamental principles of American foreign policy that Kennan helped establish. 

 

My reason for being here in DC is to attend a high-level round-table on current and emerging threats and adversaries.  Whoever takes the White House next month will face a world that is both complex and potentially dangerous, although not yet a world that is committed to a road to war and disaster.  Watching the debate here I am struck by the same doubt as one finds in Europe, albeit with an American accent. The economy is struggling; few of America’s recent foreign ventures can be called a success.  Like Europe, I see too many power Americans lying to themselves and to their people about the challenges that lay ahead.

In 1946 Kennan wrote a telegram from Moscow that at a stroke re-connected American leadership with strategic reality.  Kennan (with the help of Winston Churchill) ended Washington’s delusion that Stalin’s Soviet Union could ever be a partner in the post-World War Two world that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had envisioned prior to his 1945 death.  The Soviets were rapacious occupiers who for many central and eastern Europeans simply replaced one dictatorship with another. 

Today there is no Soviet Union but nor are China, Russia or Iran ever going to be strategic partners given their governments and systems of government.  China is locked in an internal power struggle within the Communist Party and between the Party and the People’s Liberation Army that has led it into conflict with ALL of its major Asian neighbours.  Moscow is run by a paranoid, illiberal, nationalist elite that still has ambitions to re-establish its hawkish sphere of influence in Europe and beyond should the West continue to falter.  The Arab Spring (or whatever one might call it) may lead to some flawed Muslim Brotherhood-type democracy (one man, one vote once?) but it is clear that Al Qaeda sees it as much as an opportunity for a future caliphate.  And then there is Afghanistan; America will need to be there in strength way beyond 2014 and completely renovate its strategy therein if a future president is to ever declare success, and pay the price in lives and geld that will demand. 

The thing about Kennan was not that he espoused an overly hostile anti-Soviet policy. He did not. Rather, he helped lead led the way to the creation of an American statecraft which not represented a profound break from the American isolationism of its peacetime past.  By so doing America established a strategic concept and culture for American leadership that in time won the Cold War.   America led not only because it could, but because it had to. 

Coming to Washington as I have over many years I have watched the hollowing out of American leadership.  Sometimes it has been masked by American bombast; sometimes by moments of excessive modesty (yes it does happen).  It has happened because American leaders have abandoned the principles of American leadership and the deep belief in the values and indeed the interests’ American success and world peace is built on.

International ‘relations’ are called as such because they are indeed just like relationships. It is not just about treaties, meetings and diplomats.  It is about power and the instinctive understanding of friend and foe alike of both one’s ability to realise one’s interests and whether one really believes one can.  My own country, Britain, is declining fast not because Britain is no longer capable of greatness, it is.  It is declining because the elite have lied so long to themselves and the British people that they no longer know what to believe in. 

The point about America is that after a bruising decade it must now decide whether to be lonely and lead or popular and decline.  I suspect there is not much ground between the two or that Americans have long to decide.

This election may well be the moment the long and painful decline from the America’s lonely mountain-top really begins.

America needs a Kennan moment.

Julian Lindley-French

Why Do We Need Armies?

Amsterdam, 11 October.  The Duke of Wellington, he of Waterloo fame, once said “I mistrust the judgement of every man in a case in which his own wishes are concerned”.  I have just had the honour these two days past to chair an excellent conference here in Amsterdam entitled “Future Land Forces”.  What made it particularly interesting is that I learnt a lot from a lot of excellent people.  Professors are like generals in many ways, put a title in front of a name that is longer than six letters and suddenly they think they know everything.  The best (and I am most certainly not claiming that for myself) understand that to stop learning is to fail.

As ever I was robust in my chairmanship.  I pointed out to the assembled military and civilian great and good that I had a Wellingtonian distaste for the endless battle between armies, navies and air forces over who gets the most of an ever-shrinking pot of my taxpayer’s money.  Indeed, I find the whole inter-service bickering not only utterly misplaced these days but downright irritating.  In future no-one can afford to “own” (in military-speak) land, sea or air.  That is why I asked the conference to answer a question; why do we need armies?  In future 'we' will 'it' do all from the air, n'est ce pas?  

Two things stood out. First, the vital role smaller militaries such as the Dutch have to play.  The Dutch have their foibles (I know I am married to one), not least a tendency to lecture the rest of us about how to do the things they are not doing better.  However, they lack that mixture of hubris, narrowness vision and a lack of means from which Britain too often suffers.  It is pressure that encourages a delusion that one can go on maintaining the same level of strategic and military ambition however small budget cuts render the force.  I hear a lot these days in the stratosphere of self-interested politicians about doing more with less. From my experience one tends to do less with less.  Because the painfully pragmatic Dutch military have absolutely no delusions of grandeur they are in a very good position to see the world as it is.  Unless the rest of us properly re-balance strategy with capability at some point it will lead to disaster.  For the Dutch it is only a shame their politicians are so weak in matters strategic. 

The second wake-up call was an excellent presentation by a Brazilian general.  Talk about the changing of the guard.  The General wanted to share a problem with us.  How does one manage seven “strategic projects” at once?  Amongst the Europeans in the audience there was an audible “what?”  It is at moments like these that one sees the shift in the global balance of power in practice and one glimpses the complex and multipolar future that awaits us all.  If the Brazilian military are anything like their soccer team then we should all seek membership of Mercosur.

There were of course some serious take-aways from the conference.  Critical innovation does not have to be expensive and should be focused on the soldier and his/her needs.  All armies are looking at how to develop best practice throughout the ‘business’ but they are still not very good at sharing their thoughts with friends and allies.  Indeed, they are still by and large far too conservative for the age in which we live.  Military education is vital right up the command chain but what is on offer these days from we academics is by and large woefully inadequate.  And, in the absence of big enemies (apart from the wretchedness of austerity) there are no big drivers towards the kind of radical military transformation leading to a truly seamless air, sea and land force within the state and much deeper integration beyond that strategic logic would suggest.  We are all going to have to muddle through but at least we can try and be more intelligent about it.

Wellington was right.  Armies have to stop looking for a battle that suits them and render themselves much fitter for the battles that I genuinely fear lie ahead this century.  And we all must stop recognising only as much threat as we can afford.  Mind you what Old Beaky would have done with an air force is a thought to ponder.  

In the end I got the answer to my question about why we need armies from a recently retired British general and good friend.  “It’s the geography stupid!” he told me, in so many words.  People tend to live there.  

Finally, do not allow the word ‘smart’ anywhere near ‘defence’.  And, if I hear one more officer talk about ‘thinking outside of the box’ I fear I might find myself in one!

PS good news that the BAE-EADS merger has collapsed.  That deal was never going to fly!

Julian Lindley-French

British Aero-Farce

Alphen, Netherlands.  8 October. I have just been listening to Phillip Hammond, the British Secretary-of-State for Defence (Defence Minister), prepare the ground for the forthcoming sell-out of BAE Systems to the French and German-dominated aerospace giant EADS.  With a straight face (he does that well) he said that the Government would be willing to countenance the French and German governments retaining almost 20% of the new company even if the British Government had no such equivalent stake, so long as other "safeguards" were in place.  This is simply another example of a strategically-illiterate British Government once again acting in haste only to repent later at great strategic cost to a woefully-led country.  The thing is Mr Hammond this is not simply another business deal and French and German national interests will not be balanced by institutional shareholders as you imply.  If the British Government does not have the same direct influence over the company as France and Germany then whatever your 'safeguards' over time the new company will serve their interests and not those of Britain.  Period!  By selling out BAE Systems you will risk selling out Britain's future defence.  When are you and your government going to start defending the British national interest rather than trying to flog it to the highest bidder?

Julian  Lindley-French       

Nudger Dave

Alphen, Netherlands.  6 October.  PR-Meister Dave ‘Magna Carta’ Cameron is this week going to address the Conservative Party of which he was once a member at the party conference which starts tomorrow in Birmingham.  As a sweetener he will promise a qualified referendum on Britain’s EU membership some time in 2016 or 2017. It is a promise in which he simply does not believe and has no intention of honouring.   

Whilst Cameron is a consummate tactician he is simply unable or unwilling to see the big picture implications for Britain of what is happening on the European continent. So just at the moment when Britain national strategy faces the most profound choice since World War Two PR-Meister Dave retreats into the meaningless Dave-speak of the tactically-irrelevant.  Number 10 has even come up with a ‘concept’ to justify his alternative to sound national strategy - nudging.  Stop laughing please.

Rather, what passes for Dave strategy these days is the kind of empty gesture politics evident in Dave’s apple-pie and motherhood speech about Britain´s development effort to the UN General Assembly, by which the poor British pay for rich governments elsewhere in the world to ignore their own poor.  This was grand ‘nudging’ at its very worst.  What he failed to mention in his UN gush was that a recent House of Commons report revealed the pitifully weak relationship between British money spent and the change-promoting activism he claims for it.  Much of the money spent being wasted either on countries that do not need it or those that make little or no effort to collect due taxes.  Dave, you see, is all about heat not light.

Sadly, at a time of the most profound shifts in global political plate-tectonics Cameron and his fellow nudgers have privately conceded defeat.  To justify his inability to understand the British national interest and how to defend it above and beyond the noblesse oblige which seems to afflict him and the little aristocratic clique he surrounds himself with Dave has instead bought into the absurd idea that his only real job is to manage Britain’s decline.  Churchill he ain’t.

This is nowhere more apparent than in the proposed takeover by Franco-German defence giant EADS of Britain’s not-quite-so defence giant BAE Systems.  On the face of it Dave’s qualified support for this ‘deal’ is because again he fails to understand the strategic implications.  However, the man is not stupid.  Given that he is about to back himself into a corner over an EU referendum the alternative interpretation is that he needs to drive up the cost of any British departure so high as to intimidate the British people into agreeing to stay within an EU that is today implacably opposed to Britain and its national interests. 

The usual London suspects have of course emerged into the light to argue that a Britain that either seeks to renegotiate its EU membership or leave will be relegated to the second-tier and thus be less able to shape Brussels’ decisions.  It may be news to them but Britain is ALREADY in the second-tier and the EU of today bears little resemblance to the EU Britain ever-wanted.   

A ‘yes to the EU’ vote would also certainly mean that Britain joins the benighted Euro as the middle ground Cameron claims for Britain will simply no longer exist by 2016.  If you will not take my word for it, just look at ‘President’ Van Rompuy Gang of Four Report on the future of European’s money.  

Quite simply, Britain can never and will never be at the heart of THIS Europe.  Instead, if Dave succeeds Britain would be confirmed as a second-class state within the Union and we British condemned to pay for ever more for ever higher EU Commission budgets as massive transfers of ordinary Briton’s hard-earned money are committed to pay for an unaccountable and undemocratic European political monster.  How on Earth can Dave defend that and call himself a British Prime Minister?

Taken together the qualified Cameron offer of a qualified referendum and his qualified support for the takeover of BAE Systems by a company dominated by the French and German governments demonstrates yet again a failure of strategic will, belief and ambition at the top of Britain’s political elite.     

Big British thinking has been decimated by nudgers like Dave because they break the link between strategic cause and desired effect.  Maybe, just maybe, Dave will prove me wrong at his forthcoming speech to the Conservative Party Conference.  Somehow I doubt it and all we will get is more of this nudging nonsense.

Dave also said at the UN he would not preside over any cuts to Britain’s development budget however broke the country may be.  Well, there is an easy solution to that Dave.  Nudge off!

Julian Lindley-French