Ukraine-Crimea: Covenants Without the Sword

Alphen, Netherlands. 10 March.  Thomas Hobbes once wrote that “covenants without the sword are but words and of no strength to protect a man at all”.  One hundred years ago in Britain Asquith’s Liberal Government was about to face the most terrifying decision of all – whether or not to go to war with Germany.  The Cabinet was deeply split.  Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey believed that Britain had no alternative but to honour treaty obligations to protect Belgian neutrality from German aggression and a secret 1912 commitment made to protect French ports in the Channel and the Atlantic.  Others in the Cabinet tended towards the view that ancient and/or secret obligations were but words and should not commit Britain to war.  Thankfully, whilst war is not imminent Russia’s invasion of Ukraine-Crimea has once again demonstrated Hobbes’s truism; if treaties are not reinforced by all means of influence then might prevails.

 

In 1994 America, Britain, Russia and Ukraine signed the Budapest Memorandum.  In return for the abandonment of Soviet-era nuclear stockpiles that for a time made Kiev the world’s third nuclear power Ukrainian sovereignty was to be protected.  Ukraine, of which Crimea was clearly a sovereign part, duly fulfilled its obligations.  France and China later gave similar assurances.  Sadly, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine-Crimea has demonstrated that such assurances are as empty as the old Soviet nuclear silos that still pockmark the Ukrainian landscape.

The Kremlin has also revealed something else; Europe’s much-lauded soft power is simply a metaphor for empty power.  Indeed, if Hobbes were alive today he would write that civil power is of no strength at all.  EU leaders can make all the phone calls they like to to a dissembling President Putin but the Kremlin knows such bluster is but words.  Worse, by allowing a Moscow that sees the world purely in term of power to ensnare Europe in energy dependency there is nothing that can be done to stop Russia from annexing Ukraine-Crimea. 

What will it take for Europeans to wake up and realise that investment in armed forces is not blind militarism but rather part of the essential strategic balance?  Indeed, such investment is vital to demonstrate to the Kremlin and others a clear determination that all covenants will be honoured.  And yet it is precisely the abandonment of the hard strategy that underpins such covenants that made the invasion of Ukraine-Crimea possible. 

This is typified nowhere more pointedly than in London where hard strategy has been replaced by hard accountancy.  Phillip Hammond, Britain’s Secretary-of-State for Defence last week made one of the most dangerous assertions I have heard in recent years to justify the abandonment of strategy.  Hammond warned of the danger of setting strategy without knowing first how much money could be spent.  It is precisely the abandonment of long-term strategy for the sake of short-term politics that I write about in my new book Little Britain? Twenty-First Century Strategy for a Middling European Power (www.amazon.com).

The first duty of any government is the security and defence of its citizens.  What Hammond is really saying that Britain’s government will only consider security and defence investment after it has paid for welfare, health and everything else that might just keep has government in power. Only then will the British Government consider how much threat they can afford.  This is precisely how accountants corrupt strategy.  And, given than NATO and the EU are central to British security strategy Britain’s non-strategy damages both and has undoubtedly encouraged the Kremlin’s taste for military adventurism.

This is also tragic for Russia.  Last year I had the very distinct honour of addressing Russian leaders at the Moscow European Security Conference. I am no Russophobe.  In typical fashion I was blunt.  “Get over the Cold War”, I said.  “The only stable border you have is with us in the West”.  They did not listen.  Shortly thereafter I made a speech in Riga, Latvia entitled NATO’s Riga Test.  In that speech I said that the true test of NATO’s worth was whether the good people of Riga and across the region could sleep soundly in their beds secure in their own security. 

Russia is not about to invade Latvia.  However, if Europeans continue to arm covenants with words only then an unstable Kremlin might, just might, be tempted at some point to exploit “Sudeten Russians” to boost its nationalist credentials.  The use of the ethnic-Russian card to justify invasion is no different from Hitler’s demand that Sudeten Germans be united with the Reich in 1938.

In the wake of Russia’s invasion real leaders would urgently undertake a scan of the strategic horizon and re-consider their respective defence postures.  Such a scan would demonstrate to all but the strategically-myopic the dangers that are growing in the international system and the extent to which such dangers are exaggerated by Europe’s self-generated inability to uphold the very international law it claims to champion.  And yet nothing…

Peace in our time?  Make no mistake; Ukraine-Crimea could be Munich revisited if Russia is simply given a slap by the strategically limped-wristed.  It will be seen as simply another “quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing” that gets in the way of short-term strategic convenience.  If that is indeed the case then all the solemn treaties Europeans have signed since the end of the Cold War will be seen by the likes of Beijing, Moscow and others to be covenants without the sword. 

At the very least NATO nations must commit to the agreed 2% GDP expenditure on defence.  That alone will send the necessary signal that covenants such as Budapest and indeed international law in general really do matter.

What will it take indeed?

Julian Lindley-French

NATO: Hard or Soft Corps?

Izmir, Turkey. 7 March.  2014 is a strategic tipping point for NATO.  The December end of major combat operations in Afghanistan is being foreshadowed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine-Crimea.  Ideally, at this pivotal moment NATO’s September 2014 Wales summit should consider the strategic and operational future of the Alliance into the 2020s.  To that end, I am attending high-level conferences in Washington, Britain and Paris to consider those issues and will act as rapporteur for one of those meetings.  It is against that backdrop I have just attended and addressed the Corps Commanders’ Meeting at Allied Land Command in Izmir, Turkey in support of Lt. General Hodges and his team.  Are NATO corps ready for the coming challenges?

 

The basics; NATO has nine so-called Graduated Readiness Force (Land) (GRF-L) corps.  Along with maritime and air forces they are the beating operational heart of the fighting Alliance – NATO’s hard corps.  As such these forces are and will be the litmus test as to whether the world’s most successful politico-military alliance is fit for twenty-first century purpose. 

They will need to be fit as the balance of military power is fast shifting east.  This week it was announced that China would increase its defence budget this year by a further 12.2% to $131.57bn, which is probably some 15-20% below the actual figure.  The ‘fruits’ of Russia’s massive military modernisation programme can be seen in Ukraine-Crimea in the body armour and equipment being displayed by the Special and Specialised Forces under General Anatoly Sidorov’s command.

In other words, once the Afghan dust has cleared NATO leaders will finally have to face a painful fact; this is the beginning of a new and dangerous strategic age.  No longer can the certification and effectiveness of Alliance forces be measured purely in terms of counter-terrorism or security force assistance. 

The key test will be the ability of NATO forces to deter, mitigate and if needs be fight at the high-end of conflict.  President Putin invaded Ukraine-Crimea because he could.  In all likelihood China will re-take Taiwan at some point by force if it can.  Soft power and economic sanctions whilst important will not in and of themselves deter such military adventurism.  Indeed, the only way for such military adventurism to be deterred will be for the Alliance to re-invent itself as a high-end force that is also effective across a broad conflict spectrum – both fighting force and partnership force.

And reinvent itself the Alliance must.  First, this is one of those moments when NATO is looking at what is as close to a strategic blank sheet as it is possible to get.  The end of major combat operations in Afghanistan will also mark the effective end of NATO’s almost exclusive focus on stabilisation and reconstruction since 1991.  If the West together is to provide STRATEGIC stabilisation then the Alliance will once again have to become a hard alliance.

Second, for that to happen and given the economic backdrop in Europe the way NATO forces are generated and organised will need to be radically re-thought.  The Alliance will need to be at the very forefront of a new way of armies, air forces and navies working together across five strategic domains – air, sea, land, cyber and space.  Connectivity and interoperability (both actual and intellectual) will be the critical component of forces that will not so much operate together but operate as one.

So, what is my assessment of NATO’s corps?  There were two NATOs on show in Izmir - hard corps and soft corps NATO.  Some NATO nations get this and understand the need to re-generate Alliance deterrent credibility via a high-end force built on deployable strategic headquarters of which the corps are a key part.  Other NATO nations reject this and continue to emphasise low-level peace support operations and security force assistance – a kind of strategic Telly Tubbies land.  The trouble is that too many of Europe’s political leaders are also attracted to this fool’s paradise and all too keen to make the false economy of endless defence cuts.  It is a kind of strategic appeasement.

Therefore, NATO leaders must consider two options urgently.  The preferred option would be a reformed force re-established on corps that are themselves firmly established on a high-end warfighting capability.  To that end a reform, experimentation, exercising and education development programme should ideally be put in place now to harmonise force concepts, structures, capabilities and doctrines.  Another option is in effect what exists today – corps that are similar in name only, operating at very different levels of ambition and capability.  At present several NATO nations seem profoundly opposed to the idea of high-end reform. 

The high-end option would be defined purely in terms of twenty-first century military strategy with the focus on achieving a new balance between efficiency and effectiveness.  This would see the number of corps reduced from the current nine to six with all corps able to provide deployed theatre command and thus rotate seamlessly through crises and conflicts. 

if not hard corps NATO will be comprised of those Allied forces able and capable of taking on high-end military tasks.  Soft corps NATO will be those forces only able to undertake the less challenging military tasks.  Frankly, if that is to be NATO’s reality then the Alliance should be structured thus and the dangerous pretence ended hat unity of purpose and effort is anything but a fantasy.

 

However, there is another challenge that NATO commanders from SACEUR down need to grip quickly.  Experience of the past twelve years of operations has severely undermined the credibility of European multinational formations in general and the corps concept in particular. Multinational formations have been disaggregated to support nationally-led provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan, been broken up to support US headquarters, or remained by and large political fantasy (EU Battlegroups). 

Therefore, for Allied Land Command or indeed any other NATO command to generate all-important reform momentum the very case of such formations needs to be remade to political leaders – in terms of effectiveness AND efficiency.

My sense of the conference was of good people grappling with big issues and trying to back engineer grand strategic solutions via the military-strategic backdoor.  They will only get so far.  What they need is clear political guidance allied to a renewed requisite level of ambition that properly prepares NATO forces for the undoubted challenges ahead.  Surely that is one lesson of President Putin’s adventurism – if that is our politicians have the courage to see that.

NATO: hard or soft corps? 

Julian Lindley-French

Why Russia is Invading Ukraine

Alphen, Netherlands. 3 March.  Article 30 of the May 2009 Russian National Security Strategy states, “Negative influences on the military security of the Russian Federation and its allies are aggravated by the departure from international agreements pertaining to arms limitation and reduction, and likewise by actions intended to disrupt the stability of systems of government and military administration…”  The Russian invasion this past weekend is blatant flouting of international law.  It is also a long-planned intervention that has been sitting in the files of the Russian Defence Ministry since at least 1991.  The grand strategic reason for the intervention is the determination of Moscow to reassert control over what it sees as Russia’s “near abroad” with Ukraine as its lynchpin.  However, there are five additional reasons why Moscow has seized the collapse of the Yanukovich regime as the moment to intervene – history, military strategy, military capability, politics and opportunity.

 

History:  Ukraine has always had a strong pull on the Russian mind as it is the spiritual home of the Russian Orthodox Church.  In 1954 Ukrainian-born Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev handed ‘control’ of the Crimea to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.  As Ukraine was then firmly under Moscow’s control the transfer mattered little, although it did mean the de facto shift of ethnic Russians and Tartars under the nominal administrative fiat of Kiev.  On Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 the transfer became a matter of both historical and strategic import to Moscow.  ‘Loss’ of Ukraine to the EU (and eventually NATO) would be the final humiliation to the Kremlin following two decades of perceived retreat since the end of the Cold War in 1989.

Military Strategy:  One of Russia’s long held strategic mantras has been the need to maintain a warm water naval base that could enable Russian influence in the Mediterranean and the Middle East.  Sevastopol has long provided just such a facility for the Black Seas Fleet, which is in fact the Russian Mediterranean Fleet.  The nature of the Russian military operation this weekend and the use of Special Forces to establish a bridgehead at Simferopol and Sevastopol Airports are indicative.  They point to a classic Russian expeditionary operation that creates and exploits local unrest to enable seizure of the seat of government as well as control of land, sea and air space.  The initial aim is to secure the Sevastopol base and its lines of supply and re-supply with Russia.  

Military Capability: In 2010 Russia announced it would inject $775 billion into the professionalization and modernization of its armed forces.  This followed the disappointing performance of Russian forces in 2008 during Moscow’s seizure of parts of Georgia. The bulk of those new forces are established in the Central and Western Military Districts which abut the Ukrainian border.  The kit being worn by the deployed force demonstrates a mix of Special Forces (Spetsnaz) and specialised forces and reflects the effort Moscow has made to improve deployability of its elite professional forces. 

Ukrainian forces have enjoyed no such modernization.  In any case the upper echelons of the Ukrainian military’s command chain are deeply split, as evinced by the defection this weekend by the Head of the Ukrainian Navy.  Many senior Ukrainian officers owe their appointment to Yanukovich.   

Politics:  The Putin regime was established in 2000 and led to the cult of Putinism.  It is a regime that consolidates domestic power by appealing to nostalgic Russian notions of grandeur.  In particular the regime has endeavoured to recreate the sense of a Russia powerful enough to re-capture the influence Moscow enjoyed in the 1950s and 1960s at the height of the Soviet Union’s super-power.  The 2014 Sochi Olympics were very much part of the regime’s image-building.  In 2013 US Secretary of State John Kerry gave equal billing to Russia in the handling of the Syria crisis and enhanced the reputation of the regime at home. 

Opportunity:  The Kremlin under Putin is first and foremost a strategic opportunist.  The withdrawal of two US Brigade Combat Teams from Europe may seem small in and of itself.  However, taken together with the ‘pivot’ to Asia and President Obama’s uncertain grip of grand strategy the US is no longer the stabilising force in Europe it once was.  The Kremlin also has contempt for ideas of ‘civil power’ built around Germany and the EU.  Moreover, Russia’s military renaissance has taken place in parallel with the West’s failures in both Afghanistan and Iraq.  The Kremlin is also acutely conscious of Europe’s economic travails and de facto disarmament with total defence spending in Europe down by minus 1.8% per annum since 2001.  Moreover, the refusal of all but two NATO European states to meet their obligation to spend 2% of GDP on defence has also led Moscow to conclude that Europeans lack the will and capability to block Moscow’s regional-strategic ambitions.

Implications for Russia and Ukraine:  The seizure of parts of Ukraine will in the short-term strengthen the grip of Putin over Russia.  However, Russia faces deep demographic and economic challenges which unless addressed will see Russia continue to fade as the West, China and others eclipse Moscow. 

The east of Ukraine is very vulnerable.  Moscow has a cynical view of the use of power and will almost certainly use the concerns of ethnic Russians to justify an intervention that would straighten Russia’s strategic borders and thus consolidate the new Russian sphere of influence. 

Recommendations: There is no quick fix available to Western policymakers.  However, Western allies must use all the non-military tools at their disposal to force the Kremlin to reconsider the costs versus the benefits of such action.  That will include use of international fora to build a countervailing coalition, possibly with China which dislikes sovereignty grabs.  All economic tools must be applied with sanctions imposed on key officials, with Aeroflot flights to Europe and North America suspended and Gazprom slowly removed from the European market.  The accounts of senior Russians outside of the the country must be frozen.  Finally, the US must re-position forces back in Europe, including the Baltic States and Europeans must commit to the re-building of their armed forces.

Conclusions:  Over the medium-to-long term NATO allies must re-establish credible defence as part of a balanced economic, diplomatic and military influence effort in and around Europe.  Former US President Bill Clinton and former US Ambassador to NATO Nick Burns said yesterday said that the enlargement of NATO to former members of the Soviet Bloc guaranteed their security.  This is correct to a point. Without the modernisation of Article 5 collective defence the value of NATO membership will over time erode and if Putin remains in power the Kremlin will exploit such weakness. 

Julian Lindley-French

Queen Angela of Europe Visits Little Britain

Alphen, Netherlands.  28 February.  Cameron, Clegg and Miliband sat there like naughty schoolboys hauled in front of a stern headmistress.  Yesterday, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Parliament not to expect too much from Germany Britain's leaders extended more than the proper courtesies to a friend and powerful political leader.  In the servile nature of their expectations and body language they tipped over into subservience.  Watching them scrape and bow before her was not what the British people expect from their leaders. Nor was it something Chancellor Merkel wanted.  Yesterday, Little Britain and its little leaders were at their very worst.

 

In her speech Merkel called for a strong UK in a strong Europe.  And there is the problem.  What she witnessed is a weak Britain in a weak Europe. Or, to be more precise weak leaders who in the narrowness of their vision, their endemic short-termism and their lack of belief in both country and people render Britain far weaker than she actually is.  It is hard to believe these days but the Britain that is 'led' by these political pygmies remains a top six world economy and a top four military actor and yet Chancellor Merkel could well have been addressing the leaders of Iceland (with all due respect).

 

The whole event oozed with the declinism and defeatism which has infected the British political class from top to bottom and which so bemuses so many Germans.  "What does Cameron actually want?", they ask in Berlin?  He keeps talking about repatriating powers from Brussels and negotiating a new relationship for Britain in the EU before his fabled 2017 in-out referendum.  And yet he never actually spells out either his vision or his demands.  It is as though Cameron is on some political yellow brick road.

 

Berlin need not worry.  What Cameron actually wants is easy - to maintain the pretence of renegotiating Britain's EU membership just long enough to hold the Conservative Party sufficiently together until the 2015 General Elections.

 

Labour leader Ed Miliband and Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg?  Ed would quite happily hand yet more power to an unaccountable Brussels and Nick already sees his country as 'Europe'.  Indeed, Clegg said recently it was 'patriotic' to support the EU.  There was a certain irony that Merkel's call for Britain to love the EU came the same day figures were announced showing a massive surge in immigration from the EU over the past year.  The figures simply reinforced the sense of British leaders that can no longer even protect their own borders, let alone their people.

 

The sad consequence of yesterday's little bit of Gilbert and Sullivan operetta was that Merkel must have left British shores reinforced in the belief that Germany need offer London nothing. The Anglo-German relationship is becoming fast like the US-UK Special Relationship in which American leaders need but say a few nice words and British leaders fawn like star-struck groupies.  It is pathetic.

 

Sadly, such fawning treatment would also have confirmed to Chancellor Merkel that she is indeed Queen Angela of Europe.  Thankfully, Chancellor Merkel is a sensible women and knows the reality of Germany's position in Europe - ultra primus inter pares.  But really...

 

Equally, her speech revealed Berlin's conceits about the German-benefiting EU which Britain really ought to be challenging.  She said that Europe was no longer run by a few people with decisions made in secret meetings.  Excuse me but the way the European Commission makes its decisions is so opaque and so lacking in transparency that a Byzantine emperor would feel at home.  She also said the EU operated under the rule of law.  Whose law?

 

In essence, Chancellor Merkel's message to Cameron, Clegg and Miliband was clear.  "Look, the EU works fine for Germany and I may be prepared to offer you the odd irrelevant little morsel for you to exaggerate.  However, expect no more. Take Germany's EU as I want it or go". 

 

It is hard to imagine a time when Britain has been led by such political pygmies.  The only parallel I can think of is the 1920s when Messrs Bonar Law, Baldwin and MacDonald cut a similarly unimpressive and shallow swathe on the international stage.

 

Queen Angela of Europe visited Little Britain yesterday.  For once it was at least good to see a real leader in London.

 

Julian Lindley-French  

Little Britain? (www.amazon.com) Book Extract 7: Britain and International Institutions

There are three questions Britain must consider concerning international institutions given their centrality to British strategy. What does Britain want institutions to do?  What will be the future strategic and future operating environment (FOE) in which institutions will function?  What must Britain bring to the institutions to ensure their effectiveness and London’s influence over them?  The three questions underpin two strategic truisms; Britain’s influence over international institutions will be directly proportionate to the political and intellectual capital Britain invests in them, and Britain’s political capital will only be realised if supported by hard power.

 

If Britain stays in the EU, its first aim must be to keep security and defence firmly under national control, even if limited defence integration takes place between smaller EU member-states.  However, to achieve such a goal when non-Eurozone Britain is so marginal to EU politics will demand of the British a military force that is unequivocally Europe’s leader and thus most powerful.  Moreover, only by confirming Britain’s position as Europe’s strongest military power will London confirm NATO as the central institution for the security and defence of Europe, preserve American commitment to Europe and ensure British influence in and over Europe is commensurate with the national interest.

 

It is hard to over-state the damage Britain’s 2010 defence cuts did to the international institutions Britain holds dear.  Indeed, British strategy will only leverage influence through international institutions if institutions are not seen as mechanisms to compensate for cuts, particularly defence cuts.  Indeed, to generate such influence at this critical juncture, London must invest institutions with real power.  The need is pressing, as the three most important institutions for Britain – EU, NATO and the UN are all in deep trouble in one way or another. 

 

There are three axes of influence that British strategy must pursue.  First, Britain must remind European partners that there are others with whom Britain can act.  Second, the British must remind allies and partners that membership of either the EU or NATO is a contract in which British support for the security of allies and partners must be matched in return by the real support of allies and partners for Britain’s security needs and responsibilities.  Third, Britain must actively seek to influence new partners by using its institutions as frameworks for strategic relationships that possess a clear commitment to the just and effective application of both coercive and non-coercive security policy when needs be. 

 

Central to British strategy must be the maintenance of Britain’s status as a Permanent Member of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).  Indeed, even though the UN itself is dysfunctional, it remains the world’s supreme international political authority.  The UNSC is not an executive committee but rather a security council upon which only the world’s most capable military powers hold permanent seats.  For the foreseeable future Britain will remain one of the world’s top five military powers and Britain’s armed forces must be consciously and purposively maintained as such.  Permanent membership of the UNSC also places Britain at the heart of influence networks such as the G8, G20 and G all-the-rest and is thus critical to British influence. 

 

NATO is in deep crisis and in need of radical overhaul.  The Alliance is still configured for a past world which has been masked by over a decade of operations in Afghanistan that will soon come to an end.  The agenda of the September 2014 NATO Summit, due to take place in Britain, will consider the Alliance beyond Afghanistan and little less than a NATO 3.0 will suffice to re-establish a link between the strategic political and military mechanism that is the purpose of the Alliance and the future operating environment.  However, before any such radical overhaul of the Alliance can take place, Britain must finally abandon the idea that NATO means one for all and all for one.  Different member nations need different things from NATO and in future will offer different things.

 

Three topics will dominate the summit – the need for military capabilities, the need for connected forces that can think, talk and act together and co-operative security with partners, most notably the EU, but also with partners the world over.  The one thing that will not be discussed at the summit will be the radical re-structuring of the European military effort to provide credible hard power influence at affordable cost, towards which Britain should be leading Europeans.  For Britain this is critical as NATO provides invaluable structures and military standards and will remain the most likely enabler and force generator of credible military coalitions.   

 

Julian Lindley-French

On the Wrong Side of Democracy

Alphen, Netherlands. 26 February.  The other day a senior European Commission official asked me if my concerns about the growing democratic illegitimacy of the EU were some form of psychological instability.  With elections to the European Parliament due in May at a time when liberal democracy is being steadily replaced by the EU’s liberal bureaucracy the need for citizens to engage with today’s uber-elite is more important than ever.  However, the very process of ‘Europe’ has created a culture that places those on the right side of power on the wrong side of democracy. 

 

On three occasions in the past couple of weeks I have witnessed the arrogance of power which sustains such élites and which is so damaging democracy and respect for politicians. 

My first brush with self-serving power was to be told by the self-same Commission official that I was utterly wrong about the EU.  No, the European Commission had not become more powerful since the 2007 Lisbon Treaty.  Far from it, powers had been handed back to the member-states.  Moreover, the very idea of an EU elite was absurd.  Commission officials were just ordinary people doing their damnedest on behalf of the humble European citizen.  On the defensive he deployed the now time-honoured nonsense of Europe’s elite; if ever closer political union was not driven forward one could not rule out the prospect of a future pan-European war.

My second brush with power came the same day courtesy of his boss.  Fully paid-up member of the Euro-Aristocracy Deputy Commission President Viviane Reding demonstrated all too clearly the gulf between power and people in Europe.  She also demonstrated the extent to which the Commission has become a political force rather than the impartial enabler of European law. 

In a 10^th February meeting of ‘citizens’ in London she told the British it was too late for them to be debating sovereignty.  Seventy percent of Britain’s laws, she said, were now co-decided by the European Parliament and European Commission.  For Reding the whole debate in Britain over sovereignty was irrelevant and pointless.  That bird had flown and resistance was futile.  She then went onto infer the British people were too ignorant to vote in an in-out referendum because their view of the EU was “distorted”. 

As Open Europe director Pavel Sidlicki put it succinctly. “Mrs Reding epitomises the EU elites’ approach to dealing with the public – superficially embracing debate with citizens while dismissing substantive criticism”. 

However, perhaps the most egregious example of political arrogance came not from a member of the EU’s uber-élite but a current British minister very close to the Prime Minister – David Cameron’s cabal.  In a conversation said minister had with a very senior friend of mine about the need for Britain to re-discover strategy he dismissed “not particularly courteously” the very concept.  Indeed, a national vision was “a very silly idea” and quite pointless.  Events should be dealt with as they arose, he asserted. 

When challenged with the suggestion that the ability to respond to said events requires planning, choices, investments and thus strategy he simply dismissed the whole concept.

According to my friend he had, “…no grasp of, nor wish to grasp history and historical perspectives and displayed a level of arrogance, ignorance, complacency and disdain which were striking”.  No wonder Britain is in such a mess.  This explains why so much national sovereignty has been handed over to Brussels with little or no understanding of the consequences for Britain as a self-governing state.

Cameron’s friend left the best bit to last and remember this is an elected politician.   There was no point in debating publicly such issues because the public were too thick to understand.  In other words the very people who elected this serving minister are to his mind too stupid to be engaged on the huge issues of the day which affect Britain, Europe and them.  It is as though the people have become an inconvenience to those in power.  As my friend said such a point of view, “…demonstrates an unsuitability to be a leader in a democracy ( if he knows and accepts the concepts of democracy)”. 

It is the assumption of power and the intolerance of the ‘other’ that is the essential problem of many of today’s political élites.  In 1952 US diplomat Adlai Stevenson standing up to Senator McCarthy and his awful Un-American Activities Committee said, “The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live, and fear breeds repression.  Too often sinister threats to the bill of rights, to freedom of the mind, are concealed under the patriotic cloak of anti-communism”.  Anti-Europeanism?

When will Europe’s political élites realise they are the problem, not we the ‘stupid’ or mad citizens who pay for their many privileges.  European democracy is tipping into crisis and it is about time people realise that.

Julian Lindley-French

Ukraine: A Europe Whole and Broke?

Alphen, Netherlands. 24 February.  It is rare to witness history as it happens.  Sweden’s outstanding, people-open foreign minister Carl Bildt this weekend reminded all and sundry of just that when he tweeted about the importance of the moment after a revolution.  Listening from afar to Russia’s Chekovian silence in the wake of former President Yanukovitch’s ouster it was hard not to cast one’s mind back to 1989.  Then one by one Soviet satellites broke free from Moscow’s yoke and declared themselves for ‘Europe’.  However, the danger of such nostalgia is that ‘freedom’ is cast in terms of Russia's humiliation.  

 

The popular break-out culminated in November 1989 when slab by wretched concrete slab the Berlin Wall was torn down.  The small door a few brave people opened offered a vision of a Europe whole and free.  All but the most die-hard of die-hards simply assumed that 1989 marked the dawn of a new age of liberal democracy.  2014 is both more and less complicated.

Interim President Olexander Turchynov says he wants to set Ukraine back on the path to ‘European integration’.  In response Moscow has withdrawn its ambassador to Kiev “for consultations”.  In spite of an agreement between Germany’s Chancellor Merkel and President Putin that Ukraine’s territorial integrity is to be maintained with the Sochi Olympics out of the way battle-lines are being drawn.  

To reinforce Merkel’s good cop bad cops US and UK (yawn) have warned Russia not to even think about the use of force.  All this is eerily reminiscent of 1989.  Indeed, even the nature of Janukovich’s flight from Kiev had just a hint of the desperate departure of Romania’s Caucescus from power…and eventually life itself.

And yet 1989 was also very different to 2014.  The US was the dominant European power and that is clearly not the case today as Germany assumes an ever-stronger leadership role.  Today, the ideal of liberal democracy back in 1989 has been eclipsed by the liberal bureaucracy the EU is inflicting on Europe; the harsh day-to-day reality of ever close political union.  And, far from being the rich West versus the poor East, ‘Europe’ today is almost whole but by and large broke. 

And that is the irony of 2014.  If Brussels, or whomsoever is in charge of ‘Europe’ these days, does not handle this moment carefully the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution could forge an implicit partnership between Western European citizens and the Kremlin.  This is because for Turchynov ‘European integration’ is actually a metaphor for access to huge amounts of taxpayer cash belonging to those relatively few Western Europeans who pay for this kind of thing and who are still reeling from the impact of successive Eurozone bail-outs. 

Even the still-broke British are offering “large amounts of cash” via the IMF according to Foreign Secretary Hague.  This may be to offset London’s ritual humiliation last week at the hands of the French, Germans and Poles who went to Kiev to broker a deal that collapsed almost as soon as it was signed.  It may also be due to German pressure at last week’s talks between London and Berlin to provide funds precisely because the British taxpayer has been shielded from the Eurozone crisis.  As an aside it was interesting to see Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski being showcased by France and Germany as the new EU ‘Foreign Minister’ when Cathy Ashton steps down in November.

And Ukraine will need to be many large buckets of cash.  Ukraine is bankrupt.  Or, at least it will be when Moscow later this week withdraws the c€12bn/$16.5bn it has pumped into Ukraine’s ailing finances of late to keep Kiev close, allied to a 30% drop in available gas supplies if Russia cuts the pipeline.  According to the CIA GDP per capita is $7500 per annum which ranks Ukraine 140th of some 220 states in the world, with 24.1% of the population below the poverty line.  Public debt has also of late spiralled.  In other words Ukraine could be a very big Greece.  Ukraine’s economy is totally ill-equipped for a sudden opening to Western markets, particularly in the heavy-industry sodden and Russian-speaking east of the country.  Therefore, it is vital that all of Europe’s leaders enter this crisis with eyes wide open. 

First, there can be no solution to Ukraine’s turmoil without the support of Russia.  Of a population of 45.5 million people some 17.3% are ethnic Russian concentrated in the east of the country and most notably in Crimea, the home of the Russian Black Seas Fleet.  

Second, a new constitution must be drawn up as soon as possible that clearly and openly protects the rights of the Russian minority in keeping with European law.

Third, the Organisation of Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) should be given the lead to ensure that Ukraine’s future does not become a zero sum game between a German-led EU and Russia.

Fourth, the new leadership in Kiev must be disabused of any romantic notions they may have that following elections an EU-friendly Kiev could be fast-tracked into the Union. After all, European Commission President Barosso has just told secessionist Scots that any such deals would be “difficult, almost impossible”. 

Fifth, offering Ukraine an EU rather than a Russian future will cost billions of euros and Europeans must recognise that.  Belarus will be next. 

Sixth, Moscow must be made to fully understand that there can be no military adventurism in Ukraine.  Ukraine’s security is intrinsically linked to the EU and NATO members around it.

For all that Ukraine must be supported.  2014 is not 1989.  However, like it or not the key to Ukraine’s future still lies in Moscow.  At the very least Moscow must be invited to host a conference on the new European order and told Russia is central to Europe’s future, not simply Europe's past.  Then just then Ukraine may finds its way to peace and stability.

Over to you, Carl!

Julian Lindley-French