Euro-Realism: Debunking Nick Clegg

Alphen, Netherlands. 9 October.  In a speech yesterday entitled “Richer, Stronger, Secure and Greener” fellow Sheffielder, fellow former Eurocrat (sort of) and Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg made an impassioned plea for Britain to remain within the EU.  “The day I dread”, he thundered, “...the day I hope never comes – is a time when it is all too late:  Britain has stumbled out of the EU, and we look back to these days and say we should have done more”.  So let me debunk Nick Clegg.

 

“Let me be absolutely clear: leaving the EU would be economic suicide”.  At its Eurozone heart the European Central Bank will shortly move to stabilise the Continent’s broken banks many of which were exposed to the Spanish property bubble.  Fixing the Eurozone's banks some of which are German could cost up to €200bn ($270bn) of taxpayer’s money and by so doing kill economic growth for the rest of the decade.  Moreover, Greece will require further bail outs whilst Italy, Spain and Portugal have not even begun to carry out the structural reforms vital if the EU economy is to become globally competitive.  Staying in the EU looks more like economic suicide than leaving it.

 

“Three million British jobs are linked to the Single Market – three million. As a member we are part of the world’s biggest borderless market place, made up of 500 million people. It’s now the largest economy in the world - where we do around half of all our trade.”  The annual cost of EU regulation to Britain is now €5bn ($7bn).  This is a ‘tax’ on jobs which by extension makes an already uncompetitive European economy dangerously so. 

 

Furthermore, a recent report by Britain’s Office for National Statistics highlighted Britain’s growing trade deficit with the rest of the EU and the burgeoning trade surplus with the rest of the world.  The EU represents 45% of Britain’s trade of which 90% of that is with Germany.  Indeed, Britain is Germany’s biggest world trading partner.  The Germans are not noted for acting against their national interest and whatever Britain’s EU status Berlin would want to keep the relationship strong. 

 

“What will happen to our influence in the world if we choose to go it alone”?  Take European defence.  Between 2008 and 2012 small European countries cut defence budgets by 30%. Medium-sized states by 10-15% and Britain and Germany by 8%.  Of the €180bn ($243bn) or so EU members spend each year on defence Britain and France alone represent almost 50%.  Moreover, Britain, France and Germany spend 88% of all the defence research and development in Europe.  Worse, 19 of the 28 EU member states spend less than €4bn per annum and much of it horribly inefficiently. 

 Today, the EU average spent on defence is 1.36% of GDP and the NATO average (excluding the US) 1.52% which is well below the agreed NATO target of 2% GDP.  Ironically, given proliferation elsewhere in the world it is Nick Clegg’s “Little Britain”, one of only 3 NATO members (including the US) that spends 2% GDP on defence that is leading Europe back to defence sanity with a €200bn ($270bn) defence equipment programme over the next ten years. 

“What will happen to our citizens’ safety if we leave…Criminals cross borders – so must we”. These are the borders Nick Clegg and the EU want to scrap.  Indeed, citizens’ safety would be better served if Nick Clegg simply got the UK Border Agency to work.

“Brussels isn’t perfect by any means. But it’s just not true that it’s some kind of sinister super-bureaucracy…”   Strange that.  The Economist (hardly an anti-EU trumpet) this week said, “…some Eurocrats admit many national politicians have little idea how much power they have conceded to Brussels”. 

 

Nick Clegg and I agree on the need for a referendum on EU membership to be put before the British people.  Given the deeper political integration that is coming if Nick Clegg was honest with the British people the question would be essentially the same as that which will be offered to the Scottish people next September; “Should Britain be an independent country”.  Indeed, for that is the real choice now to be made and which is implicit in Clegg’s speech… and Nick Clegg knows it.

Unlike some I do not want Britain to leave the EU but the choice Britain faces now is either to leave the EU or surrender its distinctive political culture.  There is no middle ground for Britain to occupy.  Indeed, such are the forces at work in the Eurozone crisis the EU and the Euro are one and the same thing.  The only option thus available is for the Union to integrate further or dismantle the single currency. 

 

Clegg says he fears the day Britain leaves the EU.  There is a much greater danger.  Britain awakes one day to find itself part of a federalised Europe over which it has absolutely no influence.  

The saddest thing about Nick Clegg’s speech is what it reveals about the man himself; a British politician who is blind to the EU’s many failings and who believes neither in Britain nor the British people. 

 

He must be a Wendy – a Sheffield Wednesday fan. 

Julian Lindley-French

Pashtun: The Unanswerable Question?

Alphen, Netherlands. 7 October.  Rudyard Kipling once wrote, “We have forty million reasons for failure but not one single excuse”.  A year ago this week the inspirational Malala Yousafzai was shot by the Pakistani Taliban for championing the right of girls to an education in North-West Pakistan.  Next month Abubakar Siddique will publish an important book entitled “The Pashtun Question” (London: Hurst and Company).  Both Ms Yousafzai and Abubakar imply and address a question that has haunted Western strategy since 2001; can the proud Pashtun take their rightful place at the heart of government in both Islamabad and Kabul? 

The West’s post-2001 vision (such as it was) saw Afghanistan and Pakistan sufficiently strong to deny AQ the use of their respective territories for the launching of attacks against the West.  The strategy was dependent on a compliant Pashtun.  Indeed, since Western forces deployed to Afghanistan in November 2001 the Pashtun have been at the epicentre of efforts to help Afghans build an Afghanistan that is no longer a threat to itself or its neighbours. 

The value of Siddique’s book is to demonstrate that the relationship between the Pashtun, the Taliban and AQ is much more complex than many outsiders understand.  Whilst all Pashtuns are not Taliban, it is certainly true that the Pashtun and the Taliban are intrinsically linked.  However, the relationship with AQ and the foreign fighters is and always has been complex.  In other words, a counter-radicalisation strategy should have been possible if built on the subtle clan, tribe and faith networks, .loyalties and distinctions that pass for politics in the region. 

As ever, the Pashtun Question can be traced back to history and an 1893 line the British drew on an imperial map to divide and rule the ‘Pathans’.  During the ‘fuzziness’ of the British Raj Pashtun autonomy was tolerated because there was little else the British could do and the Pashtun were useful in countering Russian ambitions in the region.  However, since Pakistan’s 1947 independence from Britain the Pashtun have been both parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan and yet autonomous from both Islamabad and Kabul - self-governing people in an ungoverned space.

Some have suggested the creation of an independent Pashtunistan.  However, such a state would effectively dismember both Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Moreover, the creation of a third weak state based simply on ethnicity would only deepen tensions between the Balochi, Hazzara, Punjabi, Sindhi, Tajik, Uzbek and the Pashto peoples who have populated these lands long before the British imported the idea of the ‘state’.

Ironically, by casting the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan as a first step in a Global War on Terror (GWOT) Washington and its allies forgot the most essential lesson for dealing successfully in Afghanistan and Pakistan; all politics are intensely local.   Today Afghan state-building is essentially failing not least because the West has not dealt with the chronic and endemic poppy-driven corruption of the Kabul government.  Too often the West has been seen to support people the Pashtun despise, a reality brought home to me during a meeting with the elders of a Pashtun village.

The US is also changing strategy.  With the May 2, 2011 killing of Osama Bin Laden the exclusive identification of AQ with North-West Pakistan and Southern Afghanistan has weakened.  Instead, AQ affiliates have appeared in Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia and Syria with sympathisers now well-embedded in Western societies such as America and Britain.  The consequences of AQ’s brand outreach were all too apparent in the September 2013 attack on the Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi, Kenya.  Indeed, the attacks this weekend by US Special Forces in Libya and Somalia mark the beginning of a new intelligence-led strategy aimed at decapitating AQ wherever, whenever…

The West’s failure in both Afghanistan and Pakistan also reflects the ever-widening gap between American and European strategic culture.  Today, most Europeans have either pulled out or tuned out.  Indeed, whilst the US is perfectly content to employ drones and Special Forces in a coercive strike and punish strategy for many Europeans coercion has become a dirty word.  Such a split not only undercuts Western strategy in the region but has brought NATO close to the edge of dysfunction.

Consequently, the West is about to join the long list of those who came, who saw and failed to answer the Pashtun Question.  By suggesting the Pashtun people can identify with both the Afghan and Pakistani states Abubakar suggests there is an answer to be found.  I wonder.  Equally, it is a crying shame this book is appearing only as the sun sets on the West’s intervention rather than at its dawn.  Indeed, if no answer can be found to the Pashtun Question it will doom both Afghanistan and Pakistan to the outer margins of stability and that is only in the interest of the fanatics that shot Ms Yousafzai.  

Pashtun: the unanswerable question?

Julian Lindley-French

US: Anyone for Tea?

Alphen, Netherlands.  4 October.  All countries exist in a space between a mythical past and current reality.  However, few permit past myth to destroy future hope.  That is what 20 to 30 conservative Tea Party Republicans in Washington are effectively trying to do.   To their minds the Tea Party faction is standing up for the ‘little guy’ in the face of monstrous socialized government in the guise of Obamacare.  In fact, by closing down the US Government a few dangerously deluded American politicians are holding not just America to ransom but the entire world. 

 

That doyen of the Tea Party Rand Paul, the junior Senator from Kentucky, said recently, “Washington is horribly broken. We are encountering a day of reckoning and this movement, this Tea Party movement, is a message to Washington that we're unhappy and that we want things done differently”.  They may get their wish.

This is not the first time the US Government has been shut down by silly American domestic politics.  The last time was 17 years ago.  However, that shut down took place against the backdrop of a booming world economy.  Today, the world’s economy can best be described by the words of an old Sting song – fragile!

The actions of Mr Paul and his colleagues could well doom the world to an economic and financial crisis even worse than the 2008 banking collapse.  Indeed, without a bipartisan agreement to increase America’s debt ceiling from its current $16 trillion to $17 trillion the US could technically default on its debts.

Such a default would lead in turn to a crash in the bond markets as those holding American debt often in unstable regimes and mainly in Asia would rush to dump dollars.  Indeed, people in such places hold American debt precisely because as the world’s driver economy and home to the world’s reserve currency such nonsense should not in principle happen.

Given that fragility an American technical default would see the US economy contract sharply.  The value of the dollar would plummet whilst that of other currencies would climb sharply.  China would be particularly badly hit.  Indeed, Beijing is already facing falling domestic demand and is looking to re-ignite export-led growth. 

The implications do not bear thinking about. The US debt/GDP ratio is some 110% of debt to GDP, compared with for example the UK at 95.6%.  China’s debt to GDP ratio is believed to be between 230 and 240% and possibly as high as 400%.  In other words, if the Washington stand-off is not resolved soon it could well trigger the mother of all debt crises in China.  A Chinese debt crisis would make the Eurozone look like a walk in the park for the world economy.

Worse, the crisis would mark the end of the Bretton Woods financial system which placed America at the centre of world financial and economic power.  Indeed, the end of Bretton Woods would mark the end of the American age far more perfunctorily than a sudden decline in American military power.  Americans would also see US growth-killing borrowing costs soar to levels to which Europeans have become dangerously accustomed.

Emerging powers together with China and the EU would almost certainly push for a basket of currencies to act as the future world reserve with the mighty dollar reduced to being one in a ‘basket’ of reserve currencies.  America would in effect be shooting itself in the very foot Tea Party Republicans have lodged firmly in America’s mouth.

The implications of an American technical default for fragile Europe are clear.  It could cost up to $250bn to re-capitalise the Eurozone’s shaky banks.  The only reason the bond markets are not as yet panicking is that the European Central Bank said it would (unconstitutionally and illegitimately) ‘do all and anything’ to prop up the Eurozone economy.  In reality little or nothing is being done to reform the fundamental structural problems of economies such as Italy’s.  The merest shock could bring the whole Euro edifice crashing down.

It is therefore not without irony that the 1773 Boston Tea Party from which Mr Paul and his colleagues draw inspiration is itself largely a myth.  The myth has it that American patriots threw bundles of British-owned tea into Boston Harbour as a protest against an autocratic monarch trying to impose an unreasonable tax – the Stamp Tax.  In fact London was simply trying to get the American colonials to make a reasonable contribution to their own security.  The rest, as they always say is history…or rather myth. 

It would be an irony to say the least if a world financial edifice made in Washington is brought down by Washington.  Sadly such disgraceful Washington politicking makes it hard for those of us who believe in America to take America seriously at such time and that is profoundly dangerous. 

So, Mr Paul, you may see “things done differently” – disastrously so.  In other words grow up!

Anyone for Tea?

Julian Lindley-French

Iran: Speak Softly BUT...Mr President

Alphen, Netherlands. 30 September.  On 26 January, 1900 US President Theodore Roosevelt wrote a letter to Henry L. Sprague of the Union Club of New York in which he wrote, “Speak softly and carry a big stick and you will go far”.  The US Press seized on the phrase and a new US foreign policy doctrine was born – ‘Big Stick Diplomacy’.  Last week in New York Iran’s President Rouhani signalled a desire to open a new chapter in US-Iranian relations.  There are however two ways of looking at Iran’s demarche – an optimistic and a pessimistic view.

 

The optimistic view is that President Rouhani is genuine in his desire to improve relations.  The 27 September telephone call between the two presidents and the meeting between the US and Iranian foreign ministers were indeed important political landmarks in an otherwise barren landscape of mutual mistrust.  At the very least President Rouhani’s style is a welcome change to the cartoonish anti-Americanism of his immediate predecessor President Ahmadinejad.  Moreover, Rouhani’s suggestion that Iran would re-start nuclear talks “without preconditions” is also an important break with the past. 

There is also clear evidence that Western-led sanctions are damaging both Iran’s economy and society and thus undermining the regime’s grip on power.  Moreover, President Rouhani was met with protests from hard-liners upon his return from New York which suggests the shift in policy is genuine.  Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayotallah Khamenei has also issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons and their use.

However, even the optimists must prepare for a long haul.  A former British ambassador Sherard Cowper-Cowles recently said that in any diplomatic dealings with Iran form is almost as important as substance.  Therefore, President Rouhani’s New York demarche is at best a prelude to a play of many acts.  Dealing with Iran will thus require patient engagement with all the diplomatic niceties and conventions observed if there is to be any chance of an enduring political settlement.

There is also a pessimistic view to be had.  President Rouhani is a seasoned diplomat and a sophisticated and considered leader.  However, his assertion that Iran is not seeking, nor has it ever sort the development of nuclear weapons is simply not credible.  Rather, the pessimists believe Iran has noted the West’s difficulties over Syria and has concluded the US and its European allies no longer have the will to use force.  With 'Big Stick Diplomacy' dead now is the time to sow confusion between the US and its allies.

Specifically, Tehran sees the 3 September vote of Britain’s Parliament not to authorise force against the Assad regime and President Obama’s own problems with Congress over Syria as further indicators of a lack of Western resolve.  Critically, after a bruising decade Europe in particular has abandoned any pretence to coercion in foreign and security policy and Americans are retreating into sequestration-driven isolationism.

Therefore, the suggestion by President Rouhani that Western-led sanctions are damaging the life-quality of Iranians simply tells Western politicians and publics exactly what they want to hear.  If that is correct Iran could be seeking to isolate the US in the so-called ‘E3+3’ meetings at which Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the US discuss Iran’s nuclear ambitions.  The US and its allies will thus awake one morning to an Iranian fait accompli announcing to the world it has become a nuclear weapons power which will irrevocably change an already unstable balance of power across the Middle East and beyond.

In that light President Rouhani’s comments then take on an entirely different strategic hue.  Even the carefully staged protests upon President Rouhani’s return from New York would be part of an attempt to de-stabilise US policy.  Indeed, President Rouhani’s very reasonableness could thus be a greater threat to US and allied policy than President Ahmadinejad’s hysteria as conflict-weary Americans and Europeans are suckered by a smile and a wave.  Sadly, in the hard reality of international politics there is a world of difference between appearance, intent and action.  Tehran is simply buying time. 

Why now?  According to several Western intelligence agencies Iran is about to enter a critical phase in the the development of a nuclear weapon.  Iran has much to gain by speaking softly as it develops a big stick. Therefore, President Obama would be wise to recall the sage advice of President Theodore Roosevelt as he contemplates the US response to Iran’s charm offensive. 

Speak softly but carry a big stick and you could go far, Mr President.

Julian Lindley-French

Would Someone Please Sink HMS Margaret Hodge!

Alphen, Netherlands. 27 September.  It is not often I am moved to write two blogs in a day.  And, I am afraid for those of you not of an island persuasion this is one of those British moments of mine when I really do sound like ‘Irritated of Alphen’.  This is because I am ‘Irritated of Alphen’.  The reason for my irritation is that I have just finished reading the report of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee on Carrier Strike 2012.  The report reads for what it is; a politicized piece of nonsense from an over-bearing and self-serving out-of-control politician who bangs on about the cost of everything but understands the value of nothing - Margaret Hodge.
 

In characteristically bombastic style she thundered; “When this programme got the green light in 2007, we were supposed to get two aircraft carriers, available from 2016 and 2018, at a cost to the taxpayer of £3.65 billion. We are now on course to spend £5.5 billion and have no aircraft carrier capability for nearly a decade”. 
 

Just for once Mrs Hodge please take the long, strategic view and consider the British interest rather than the narrow electoral ambitions of the Labour Party.  Yes, the carriers have cost more than planned but show me a major engineering project that has not and does not.   Yes, mistakes have been made switching between the types of F-35 the carriers will carry – that is what happens when programmes get politicised.  Yes, Britain’s defence procurement system needs sorting out.  Yes, the aircraft planned for the carriers might not be complete as yet and some other systems still need to be perfected.  However, these problems will be overcome.
 

Equally, (and just for the record Mrs Hodge) HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales are the most advanced engineering projects Britain has ever embarked upon.  Indeed, the cutting-edge way in which the Aircraft Carrier Alliance has approached the project has generated engineering vision and skills vital to the future British economy at a critical juncture.  When they are complete the very fact of them will force you politicians to think strategically for once about Britain’s role in the world.  Indeed, over the life of these two ships their value will be proven to Britain, Europe, NATO and the wider world many times over.
 

Look at the facts.  By 2030 the world’s population will be well over 9bn people compared with today’s 6bn.  50% of them will live in cities and over 80% will live 100kms or less from the sea.  The hyper-competition for energy and life fundamentals that such pressures will generate allied to the emergence of powerful but instable states will create all the conditions for dangerous and violent instability.
 

For once Britain is ahead of the curve with the future force it is beginning to build and the two aircraft carriers are central to that.  This is because the two ships are not simply aircraft carriers, something the defence-strategic Neanderthals who wrote the report clearly do not understand.  Rather, the ships will be powerful projectors of influence able to prevent conflict upstream and deal with conflicts downstream from humanitarian and rescue missions to outright national emergencies.  They will be the centre-piece of a new military central to British national strategy with a joint force credibly influential across five 21^st century domains – air, sea, land, cyber and space.
 

Furthermore, the ‘QE’ and ‘PoW’ will provide British leaders with the flexible discretion to intervene or not to intervene until the very last moment a decision must be made.  They will also act as a critical nexus between land, sea and air operations and as such signal Britain’s strategic intent to ally and adversary alike.  Critically they will help re-establish Britain’s strategic brand in the dangerous world ahead and enable Britain and its partners to prevail in the conflicts to come. 
 

Clearly you do not understand that Mrs Hodge and like so many of your colleagues who are meant to lead the rest of us you are putting your head in the strategic sand. Or, you simply believe Britain should no longer aspire to such a role and you are using the report to create a very different Britain - Little Britain.  Indeed, it is precisely the kind of narrow-minded, short-sighted, non-strategic thinking of which the report reeks that has brought Britain low.  Were the rest of the committee asleep or has Margaret Hodge now completely taken over?
 

HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales will afford Britain real strategic influence in their fifty year service lives in a world full of friction.  The report of the Public Accounts Committee does nothing to recognise such strategic value. 

Would someone please sink HMS Margaret Hodge!

 

Julian Lindley-French

 

Defence Strategy and the Turing Test

Paris, France. 27 September.  Ah, Paris in springtime!  Well, it is September but it feels like spring. I flew in from Rome where I had spoken on the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy, which is the strategy equivalent of talking paint dry.  My reason for being in Paris was to talk grand strategy with senior managers of Thales, a defence-industrial giant.  As I spoke I could not but help think of the test Alan Turing once established for artificial intelligence to pass if it was successfully to mimic human thought and action.  Europeans need a similar test for the many EU, NATO and national defence strategies which plaster the walls of Europe’s rickety and ageing grand villa – do they at least mimic reality?

 

Defence strategy in Europe is a sort of ‘Strategic Reverse Half-Nelson’.  This is achieved by turning the strategic telescope around so every threat looks much smaller than it is and then halving the number by putting the telescope in front of Nelson’s blind eye.  To that end, most European states decide first how much of a military they wish to afford then write strategy to fit.  This is not exactly how strategy works.

Technology is the future of defence strategy.  Take the soon to be ‘flooded’ 65,000 ton British aircraft carriers.  The Royal Navy no longer launches ships but ‘floods’ them, which strikes me as somewhat nautically oxymoronic.  HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales (good names eh?) will be in service until 2070 if that is someone else has not ‘flooded’ them both long before!  And that’s my essential point; by 2070 who knows what technologies will be out there and who will have access to them.  It is therefore vital technological redundancy is central to both strategy and technology design. 

Unfortunately, strategy is written by liberal arts majors (such as your blogonaut) under the command of liberal arts politicians.  ‘Strategy’ talks much of ‘futures’ together with ‘power’, ‘history’, ‘partners’ and ‘responsibilities’. ‘Change’ is also mentioned a lot.  However there is little real understanding of what really drives change, mainly because change costs money.  Therefore, as guidance for planning most defence strategies are not worth the paper upon which they are written.  Indeed, they are invariably about the political moment not the strategic future.

Just look at some of Europe’s recent great works of strategic art.  ‘Strategy’ for Paris and London goes something like this. “For some strange reason Johnny Foreigner cannot forgive us for being strong in the past and being horrid and would love to give us a good kicking.  Moreover, given we your leaders have made a complete mess of your society everyone hates us both at home and abroad.  However, we will list all of the things we should be doing to secure you but as we are basically broke and have no idea what to do we will also talk a lot about aspiration.  To make you feel better we will however build a few extremely expensive big, floaty things or even more expensive small, fast flying things and put lots of flags on them.  Sorry”. 

For the rest of Europe strategy goes like something like this.  “We have horrible neighbours who are now our ‘friends’. However, you really cannot trust these people.  We also have formerly strong allies who once promised to defend us from our horrible neighbours but did not.  Therefore, both our neighbours and allies must now pay for our defence.  However, as a sign of good faith we will send one doctor to support the strategic flights of fancy beloved of the formerly strong so long as she is nowhere near the front line”.  And then there is Germany the strategy of which can be thus summarised: “We upset everyone in the past but now we are back.  However, we really promise to be very nice this time and we will call ourselves ‘Europe’”.   

Strategy in Europe has thus become the antidote to strategy – a way of avoiding strategic reality by either pretending the world is not as it is or by recognising only as much threat as somebody else can afford – the Americans. 

Henry Kissinger once complained that he could never call Europe in an emergency as there was no telephone number.  Today there are a myriad of telephone numbers but all dear Henry would get if he called is the same Ansaphone message.  “We value your partnership but we are sorry all of our leaders are busy right now building ‘Europe’.  However, do leave your name, rank and telephone number and we might one day get back to you.  Please go on defending us and have a nice day”.

There is some good news.  Neither of Britain’s new aircraft carriers will be called HMS Invincible as this would certainly guarantee their 'flooding'. 

Strategy, capability, technology and affordability are intimately intertwined and defence strategy must thus be established on a proper understanding of all elements.  Too often it is not.   Something Alan Turing would have all too readily understood.

Julian Lindley-French

The Dutch Cut NATO!

Alphen, Netherlands. 23 September.  Last week in a “Defence Note” carefully buried in an announcement on the wider national budget The Netherlands cut some €370m (c$400m) from an already straitened defence budget.  At the same time I gave a speech to senior NATO commanders in Riga, Latvia during Exercise Steadfast Pyramid and Pinnacle designed to test the credibility of the Alliance’s twenty-first century collective defence.  My core message was blunt; the true test of NATO was that the good people of Riga could sleep soundly in their beds. However, to pass such a test NATO would need a twenty-first century defence built on twenty-first century forces.  Even as I spoke I could feel the rug being pulled from under my feet by the Dutch decision. 

 

The cut was sweetened by an announcement that the Netherlands will purchase 37 Joint Strike Fighters (JSF) worth some €4.5bn ($6bn) to replace ageing F-16s.  Back in 2010 I wrote a report entitled “Between the Polder and a Hard Place” together with Col Anne Tjepkema, formerly of the Royal Netherlands Air Force, for the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London.  The report charted 14 Dutch defence cuts since 1991.  One of the report’s findings was that each Dutch defence cut has been sweetened by a commitment to purchase a new piece of military equipment.  However, that commitment was either broken or watered down in a subsequent defence cut.  Expect the same.

Since the end of the Cold War Dutch defence spending has fallen from 2.8% of gross domestic product (GDP) to 1.4% GDP and is planned to fall to 1.14% GDP by 2015.  Indeed, if one removes Dutch Gendarmerie forces from the defence budget the figure is nearer 1% GDP or half of NATO’s agreed defence investment level of 2% GDP.  Moreover, according to the CIA the Netherlands ranks 92^nd in comparative world military expenditure out of 173 states and 15^th out of NATO’s 28 members. To be fair ‘superpower’ Germany comes in at 102^nd and Canada 120th, but the rest comprise mainly minnows such as Albania, Belgium, Iceland, and Luxembourg. 

The Dutch Government likes to hide behind the ‘little country’ alibi.  However, contrast the defence ranking of the Netherlands with its economic ranking and the extent to which the Dutch are defence free-riding becomes all too apparent.  According to the CIA the Netherlands is Europe’s 6th largest economy, the world’s 24th largest by power purchase and the 7^th largest trading power on the planet utterly reliant on open global sea and air lines of communication which have to be defended.

With the Americans stretched thin the world over NATO Europe must either be capable of going with the Americans or must credibly be able to act autonomously in and around Europe’s rough neighbourhood.  Indeed, to keep NATO strong and America engaged Europeans must help the US to remain strong wherever and whenever.  This is why the British will next year launch the first of two large aircraft carriers to project strategic power.  If Europeans fail that test NATO will fade and eventually fail. 

Defence Minister Jeanine Hennis-Plaeschart uttered forth the usual political platitudes whilst Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans suggested that in a meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry the Americans had expressed satisfaction with the Dutch decision to buy JSF.  My well-placed Washington sources tell me the Americans also expressed concerns about the defence cuts and their impact on NATO.

The only way for the Netherlands to squeeze military credibility out of their future force will be to enact radically deep synergies between the Royal Netherlands Army, Navy and Air Force.  In effect they will need to become a single service.  The Hague will also have to seek defence integration with other states in a similar position, most notably Belgium.  This will effectively mark the end of Dutch defence sovereignty. 

Furthermore, given the rise in the cost of defence equipment the continual cuts to the Dutch defence equipment budget makes the size of the force the enemy of the cost of the equipment the force needs – a capability-capacity crunch.  Indeed, the Dutch are now struggling to afford any military capabilities hence only 37 JSF which is not a viable force.  ‘Not a viable force’ is an accusation that can now be levelled against the entirety of the Dutch armed forces as The Hague drives them below an irreducible level. 

With proliferation of strategic weapons across a world full of friction the Dutch Government seems all too happy for the American, British and French taxpayers to bear the true cost of defending the Netherlands and its interests.  This is a tragedy because having worked with the Royal Netherlands Armed Forces I have witnessed first-hand the outstanding quality of Dutch personnel.

Will the people of Riga sleep sound in their bed?  Yes for now but not for much longer if countries like the Netherlands think their defence is someone else’s problem.  The Dutch are cutting NATO.  

Julian Lindley-French