Je Suis Charlie 2016
A Regular Commentary on Strategic Affairs from a Leading Commentator and Analyst
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hms iron duke
Thursday 7 January 2016
Wednesday 6 January 2016
Rhodesgate: The Judgement of History
“…the judgement of
history will…be that he did more than any other Englishman of his time to lower
their reputation and to impair the strength and compromise the future of the
Empire”.
The Manchester
Guardian on the death of Cecil Rhodes, 27 March, 1902
Alphen, Netherlands. 6 January.
Just before Christmas I was wandering around the colleges of my alma mater Oxford University as a
very typically British university scandal broke. A group of students led by a
South African Rhodes scholar demanded that the statue of Cecil Rhodes be taken
down from its lofty perch looking down on the learned folk of Oriel College.
Rhodes was the arch-imperialist and even archer-capitalist of the late
nineteenth century, and founder of said elite scholarship. By any stretch of the historical imagination
Rhodes was not a nice man. Indeed, as his 1902 obituary in the Manchester
Guardian implied Rhodes’s lust for ever greater imperial power as an extension
of his own imposed misery and exploitation on millions of black Africans and Boer
settlers across much of southern Africa.
As I wandered with what I would
hope is the educated eye of the Oxford historian I also wondered why Rhodes and
why now? In an attempt to answer that question I found myself looking at many of
the statues that drip from Oxford like baubles on a Christmas tree. By my
estimate at least half of the statues were either of exceptional people who
were exceptional precisely because they had either offended or imposed their
views on large numbers of others, or been the victims of such views.
Now, I suppose I could take a
very narrow view and suggest that the South African Rhodes scholar in question
has much to gain if he seeks a political career back in his native land (as do
many Rhodes scholars) by attacking the memory of Cecil Rhodes. However, for the
sake of argument I will be generous and accept that the #RhodesMustFall
campaign is principled.
Even if it is principled it
reflects a very narrow view of history and with the best will in the world must
be seen more as an attack on contemporary Britain as much as an attack on
nineteenth century British imperialism. What is galling for me and indeed many
is how quickly the leadership of Oriel College simply caved in. A plaque
honouring Rhodes was almost immediately removed and in February Oriel will
start a six month ‘consultation’ in February to decide whether or not Rhodes
must indeed fall. My fear is that said consultation will be about as genuine
and indeed as effective as David Cameron’s ‘renegotiation’ of Britain’s
membership of the EU!
There is however a further
question that this storm in an Oxford teapot raises; to what extent can and
indeed should one impose contemporary values on past historical figures?
History happened, or at least the history from the viewpoint of the victor at
any point in history happened. Therefore, the mistake perhaps was not that of
Oriel’s current High Table but that of a century ago which raised the statue of
a man controversial even at the time, no doubt in return for oodles of his
money. Still, look around Oxford today and one will find new centres a-sprouting
named after Saudi power-brokers and their ilk, with one that even bears the
name of a Ukrainian arms dealer. In other words, British universities have long
prostrated themselves before dodgy money.
However, for me the ‘why now’
question is the key to understanding Rhodesgate. There is a strange phenomenon sweeping across and through
British universitydom at present of which Rhodesgate is but a very mild
variant. It can best be called the intolerant tolerance. The basic premise upon
which tolerant intolerance is established is actually quite simple; British is bad,
non-British is better, however bad. The most obvious examples of this are the
so-called ‘safe havens’ which have been established in certain British
universities for those with extreme views, but only if those views conform to a
certain brand of extremism. Indeed, to conform such views must normally be of a
leftist or Islamist persuasion, which lead on occasions to strange alliances between
hard socialists and those with views that by any standards are closer to fascism
than socialism.
Thus, the attack on Rhodes is in
fact but the latest attack on Britain, or rather the narrative that is Britain,
by those with an axe to grind against Britain. Often under the name of ‘restorative
justice’ it is an axe that is only sharpened on one side. The aim is to
establish a new empire of thought within British universities that is often more
about the politics of race than the politics of ideas.
If not confronted by persons of
good will à la Burke I fear for the future of British universities. No longer
will they be empires of experimentation where intellects freely consider
desired future by freely considering the complex past. A place where debate is
not shaped by narrow factionalism but rather enlightenment and illumination
emerge from open debate between smart good people irrespective or race, gender,
nationality and/or orientation. A place
where again the tolerance of informed difference is regarded as sacrosanct. If
not, then I fear ‘debate’, or what passes for debate, will only take places be
between those of one particular view of power and history. The tragedy of irony
is that such ‘debate’ is little more than intellectual fascism. Those who do
not adhere to the permitted view-set? They will be either marginalised or keep
quiet for fear of being pilloried, or worse.
Walk down Broad Street and just
outside Balliol you will find a strange stone cross in the centre of the road. It is Martyr’s Cross where in 1555 Queen Mary
had Bishops Latimer and Ridley burned at the stake for heresy. Perhaps the
worse outcome of Rhodesgate would be to turn a ghastly old man into a latter
day Oxford Martyr for the silent many who resent the growing attacks on Britain
dressed up as pompous PC piety.
So, let me finish by paraphrasing
the Guardian’s obituary of Rhodes. The judgement of history is that he is doing
as much as any Englishman of his time to impair the strength and compromise the
future of his country even over a century after his death.
Let history be the judge of
Rhodes, not the mob, however ‘intelligent’.
Let his statue stand as a warning from history.
Julian Lindley-French
Monday 4 January 2016
2016: Power, Weakness & Realism
Alphen, Netherlands. 4 January.
The task of the strategist is not to predict but rather to consider how best to
achieve desired outcomes given a range of load-bearing assumptions about
relevant circumstances. However, for the sake of argument I will take a punt on
2016. One thing is clear; 2016 will as ever be about power, weakness and political
realism.
Headlines: According to the World Bank the global economy will grow
by about 3% in 2016. However, it is a fragile economy subject to shock, the most
notable of which could be a war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, two of the
leading oil producers which would particularly impact China and Europe. For
2016 at least the new systemic fault-line between the state and the anti-state
will mitigate but not stop the growing hyper-competition between liberal and illiberal
great powers. There will be no decisive action or policy undertaken by the West
in 2016 primarily because the US will be on hold for much of 2016, even as
friction and tensions continues to grow in the international system. However, 2016
will again see political realism re-emerge in a new West that will be more idea
than place. With America otherwise
engaged the key political figures in 2016 will be President Xi of China,
Chancellor Merkel of Germany and the leaders of Europe’s outlier powers –
Britain, Russia and Turkey – all three of whom in their own very distinctive
ways are finding it hard to respond to liberal Germany’s liberal dominance of
Central and Eastern Europe. With the International Organisation of Migration
estimating some 60 million people to be on the move in 2015 mass uncontrolled
migration will again be focussed on Europe, but by no means exclusive to it.
China and Russia: At the grand strategic level the economic weakening
of the world’s two leading illiberal powers, China and Russia, will see both
regimes resort to more nationalism and militarism to maintain control. In spite
of the World Bank’s suggestion that China grew by 7% in 2016 the true figure
would appear closer to 3%. This marks a distinct contraction in China’s economy
which was reflected in the 4 January suspension of the Shanghai Stock exchange
which fell by over 7% in one day.
China will continue efforts to exclude
the US from East Asia and by so doing continue its attempts to force all the
states in the region to recognise Beijing’s regional hegemony. To that end Beijing
announced that China had increased its defence budget by over 10% in 2015 and on
4 January said its aim was to surpass the US as the world’s pre-eminent military
power, with military power projection at the centre of a new military-strategic
concept. Such ambitions will inevitably lead
to deepening tensions across Asia-Pacific and intensify the military over-stretch
of a United States that remains for the moment the only truly global power. In
2016 growing tensions between China and the US will also begin to define a new
global bipolar power order focussed on Asia-Pacific, but which in time will
force all states to make a strategic choice. To ease the pressure on the US and
to counter China, Japan and South Korea will further boost their own defence
forces.
China and Taiwan: Beijing will be particularly focused on Taiwan in
2016 given the 16 January elections for the 14th president of the
Republic of China (ROC). Indeed, the People’s Republic of China sees the ‘reunification’
of the ROC with the mainland as an historic duty the securing of which will
also demonstrate to the region and the world China’s ability to influence
events at the expense of the United States and its regional allies.
Russia: According to the World Bank the collapse of the oil price
will see Russia lose between 1% and 2% of its economy in 2016 making Moscow’s
unpredictability predictably unpredictable. Although defence expenditure has
declined President Putin’s drive to re-militarise the Russian state will
continue as a ‘strong Russia’ is defined in military terms and remains central
to the narrative of the Kremlin. To reinforce that narrative Putin will seek to
maintain domestic political momentum through the politics of nationalism and by
consolidating his own power-personality cult. Specifically, President Putin
will continue in his efforts to exclude the US from Europe and to keep the major
European powers politically off-balance.
The Machiavellian but strictly limited strategic alignment with China
will also continue in 2016.
Russia will consolidate its hold
over Ukraine-Crimea and seek to detach much of Eastern Ukraine from Kiev as
part of his stated aim to recreate a buffer zone between Russia ‘proper’, NATO
and the EU. Putin will continue to warn Finland about joining NATO, and will continue
to employ ‘new generation warfare’ (destabilisation, disinformation and
intimidation) against Estonia, Latvia, and Estonia, with a particular emphasis
on cyber-destabilisation. Expect some move to further militarise Kaliningrad
and the High North.
Strategic Bipolarism: The new strategic bipolarism will also influence
the choices available to regional actors. India and Pakistan will again face
off in Jammu-Kashmir, as well as in Afghanistan where they will compete for
influence over a failing Ghani regime in Kabul. However, the peace agreement
between the two is likely to hold. That said, as China builds an exclusive zone
of power in and around the South and East China Seas India will further strengthen
its armed forces and continue to emerge in its own right as a major regional
power. New Delhi will also move to again lead what might be best termed as the
strategically non-aligned states, even as India implicitly but not explicitly
moves towards the West.
NATO: NATO will hold the Warsaw Summit in July 2016 faced with an
aggressive, instable Russia, a strategically dysfunctional Europe, an America
yet to decide its new political direction, and against the backdrop of
world-wide rearmament. At the Summit there will be much talk of Spearhead
forces, strategic reassurance, and the need to build on the ‘commitments’ made
at the 2014 Wales Summit to militarily strengthen NATO’s European pillar.
However, in the absence of strong US leadership, and indeed another strategic shock,
much will be talked about, but little decided.
United States: President Hillary Clinton will take office in
January 2017 having been elected the 45th President of the United States on 8
November after a tight, divisive and disruptive general election in which she
narrowly defeats Republican nominee Marco Rubio. With this return to dynastic
succession in the US the British will understandably ask what all the fuss was about
back in 1776. In 2016 Donald Trump will say one dumb thing too many exciting
his right-wing base but alienating the centrist voter he will need to win both
the Republican nomination and the general election. A lame duck President Obama
will seek and fail to impose gun control and dogmatically stick to his
‘avoiding dumb wars’ legacy, exacerbating the sense of an America withdrawing
from leadership.
Nuclear Cheating: The 2015 Review Conference of the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty will begin to look like one of those 1920s treaties
that foreshadowed appeasement, so far were they from strategic and political
reality. Indeed, with President Obama determined to protect his ‘legacy’ the
White House will ignore Iran’s cheating on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action, the July 2015 nuclear agreement forbidding Tehran nuclear weapons.
Tehran will continue to test a three-stage intercontinental missile and become bolder
regionally as oil sanctions are removed and its relationship with China deepens.
In response Saudi Arabia will further invest in the Pakistani nuclear programme
as a short cut to its own future nuclear capability. North Korea? Kim Jong-Un will continue to
descend into dangerous fantasy and Pyongyang will continue efforts to weaponise
its existing nuclear programme. Russia
will also continue to test new short and intermediate range missiles that
breach the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty.
Syria & the Levant: In the Middle East whilst there will be
much talk of peace agreements the Syrian civil war will continue unabated.
Indeed, the Syrian conflict will be further complicated in the collapse of
relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia which could well scupper the Vienna
process in 2016. Worse, the Syrian conflict will continue to suck in and affect
actors both in the region and beyond. The anti-Assad ‘moderate’ opposition will
continue to be split along ethnic and tribal lines. Russia and Iran will ensure
that any agreement that suggests Assad goes will falter, and the Syrian
conflict will continue to destabilise Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan, exacerbate the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and push huge numbers of migrants towards Europe,
aided and abetted by criminal smuggling gangs.
Sunni v Shia: There will be growing tensions between Sunni and Shia
as the fourteen century old dispute over observance intensifies between powerful
Middle Eastern states with contending strategic agendas. The January 2016
execution by Saudi Arabia of prominent Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr and Riyadh’s
expulsion of Iranian diplomats will deepen the tensions between Shia Iran and
the emerging Saudi-led coalition of mainly Sunni Arab states. Indeed, a regional bipolar power contest will
emerge across the Middle East organised by and around Saudi Arabia and Iran,
with Israel an unlikely but de facto partner of the former.
Islamic State: Islamic State will continue to be
pushed back in both northern Iraq and Syria as a better understanding of how IS
functions will lead to more effective action against it. Indeed, the insertion
on Western Special Forces as ‘trainers’ into the Iraqi Army, Kurdish Peshmerga
and other groups will help their military effectiveness. However, it will be a
hard fight and there are several major rejoinders: first, that a growing Shia-Sunni
split does not fracture the anti-IS coalition; second, that Turkey does not see
a stronger Kurdish force as a greater threat than IS; and, third, that powerful
Sunni tribes in Iraq can be persuaded to withdraw their support. Even if IS is
pushed back Islamism will continue to spread across the Horn of Africa, the
Sahel, and into parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. However, as IS falters in Syria
and Iraq many of its fighters will move across North Africa towards Tunisia and
Libya and back to Europe as part of the uncontrolled migration flows which will
continue unabated.
European Union: Two crises and two issues will be at the core of what
is now an endless EU mega-crisis will dominate Europe in 2016; Brexit, mass
uncontrolled migration, and the relationship between ever-closer-union and German power. Indeed, the 2016 Dutch and Slovakian
presidencies of the EU will be dominated by both crises, and will reflect the
search for a new political balance between political union, state sovereignty,
Eurocracy, German leadership, and democracy.
Prime Minister David Cameron,
ever the political gambler, will fail in his efforts to reform the EU even as
he suggests he has succeeded in the wake of the February 2016 special European
Council meeting. However, the British people will still likely vote to remain
within an unreformed EU having been subjected to what can only be described as
the propaganda of exaggerated fear by an ‘in’ campaign that will be allowed to massively
outspend the ‘outers’.
However, the Brexit referendum
will be a close run thing as it will likely take place in summer 2016 just at
the height of renewed migration chaos in Europe. Given Cameron’s self-imposed
deadline to hold the presidency before the end of 2017 the vote will need to
take place before the April 2017 French presidential elections, the September 2017
German federal elections, and Britain’s EU presidency in the second-half of
2017. Indeed, it would be a tad embarrassing for the British to quit the EU in
the middle of Britain’s EU presidency. However, Brexit is not without strategic
irony; given current projections by the World Bank, IMF and others if the
British can survive their poor quality leaders (a big if) Britain is likely to
re-emerge over the next decade or so to challenge Germany as Europe’s leading
economic and military power. Can Britain best influence Europe from within the
EU or without – that will be the simple question the referendum will decide. Whatever happens Cameron will be a political
lame duck by the end of 2016.
Over the next year liberal,
northern, western European states will bear much of the brunt of the ongoing
mass influx. This will increase popular unease and frustration with political leaders
as the fear of terrorism grows and the link between uncontrolled migration and
terrorism becomes entrenched in the popular mind. Sadly, terrorist attacks will
take place in 2016 that will see possibly hundreds of Europeans die and which will
further undermine trust between leaders and led.
In 2016 an unchallenged Chancellor
Merkel will continue to exorcise German history on the rest of Europe. Indeed,
her leadership will demonstrate the dangers of grand coalitions in democracies.
“Wir schaffen das” (“we can do this”) will remain her mantra as she justifies
her open door policy to mass uncontrolled immigration in an attempt to assuage
Germany’s Nazi past. However, another million plus people move towards Northern
and Western Europe. According to a professor at the University of Munich some
70% are young men, of whom 63% are functionally illiterate in Arabic, and thus
extremely hard to integrate into German society. Consequently, Berlin will face
growing popular unrest in Germany and political opposition from states around
Germany.
Critically, Merkel will seek to begin
to ease the political impact on Germany of the migrant crisis prior to the 2017
federal elections. She will do this by threatening to withdraw EU structural
funds from Central and Eastern European states (whereby ‘richer’ Western
European taxpayers subsidise poorer Eastern and Southern European taxpayers) if
they continue to refuse to accept more migrants. For a time she will likely have
some limited success before those migrants sent to less wealthy European states
simply up sticks again and move back west.
Turkey: Turkey, or more precisely that other European
President-for-Life Reccep Tayyip Erdogan, will emerge as a pivotal strategic
player, due to Istanbul’s proximity to Islamic State and Syria and its control
over ingress and egress from the Black Sea. 2016 will see Erdogan drive a
particularly hard bargain with Chancellor Merkel; free movement for all Turks
within the EU, or free movement of uncontrolled migrants to Greece. Turkey will
also demonstrate to Russia that the use of its Black Seas Fleet in Sevastopol
is entirely at the discretion of Istanbul. The fleet is the key to Russian
military influence in South-Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle
East.
The New West: The good news? Out of the many, multiple crises now
facing the West a new political realism will emerge. With the November 2016
election of a new US president an American-centric new West will slowly form
that is more idea than place and which contains and engages China and Russia in
equal measure. The new West will express
itself first via mercantilist structures such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership
and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership which will slowly morph
into a kind of global New Deal. TTIP and TTP will counter Chinese-led
constructs such as the BRIC. Japan will emerge as America’s strongest strategic
partner in Asia-Pacific, and London will again slowly emerge as America’s
strongest strategic partner in Europe. In Europe a new political settlement
will be found to again balance power within the EU. This will see Europeans finally
begin to awake from the torpor of institutionalism to once again to consider
their collective place in the world and the role of power, influence and
realism in their security and defence.
Hold on to yer hats!
Julian Lindley-French
Wednesday 30 December 2015
Ed Lucas: Back in the EUSSR
“If
you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face –
forever!”
George
Orwell, 1984
Alphen, Netherlands. 30
December. Ed Lucas wrote a piece in The
Times this morning which left me saddened and worried. Entitled, The EU empire’s a mess but we must stick
with it, Lucas offered a vision of the future EU ‘empire’ that was closer
to fascism and sovietism than liberal democracy. Now, I must confess I know,
like and respect Ed Lucas and most of the time agree with him. His writings on
Putin’s Russia are both realistic and persuasive. However, when I read this
morning’s piece I wondered at times if Ed was describing Russia rather than the
EU and had somehow got the titles wrong. Indeed, I searched in vain for irony
which might have redeemed the future EU Ed has on offer.
Democracy is dying in Europe.
That is in effect the central argument of the piece which can best be described
as “oh well, democracy was not that important”. Rather, the piece implies an Orwellian
vision of an EU that sacrifices democracy for efficiency and influence as
something we are all simply going to have to accept. Never!
Ed’s EU ‘empire’ is
constructed on three mini-empires – singlemarketland, euroland, and Schengenland.
He suggests that in the emerging blocworld
(my invention) such structures will be the only way Europeans can be a)
efficient; b) competitive; and c) free (to move). His central assumption is that
by aggregating European state power via supranational structures Europeans will
retain not only credible influence over big power, but the capacity for
decisive action.
The assumption is
dangerously flawed. First, the Soviet Union also contained diverse and
disparate cultures many of which were forced into a currency and trading union that
was inherently unsustainable. Second, the assumption that by aggregating power
said power can then be turned into decisive action is also nonsense as it is
more likely to simply become unwieldy. Indeed, the EU bears greater resemblance
to Terry Pratchett’s Discworld carried as it is on the back of three giant
elephants, themselves atop a ginormous and lumbering turtle, than anything vaguely
resembling the US.
Only finally does Ed
admit that democracy is a “problem”. However, he then goes onto say ‘tough’. If
‘you’ want singlemarketland, euroland, and Schengenland then such ‘considerations
trump democracy”. In any case, he suggests, there is always the European Parliament.
Oh really? Is that what passes for democracy in your vision Ed? A packed
assembly that dilutes the value of citizens’ votes tenfold and which spends
more time legitimising distant power than holding it to account.
There is an implicit irony
in the piece which is unless challenged by democrats Ed’s Orwellian vision may
be proven correct. Democracy is indeed dying in Europe for the same reasons it
died just after it began in Russia, and died before it even got started in
China. Europe’s elites are offering people a choice in the form of the European
Project; security and prosperity or democracy. It is of course a false choice
and it is a choice dictators have offered over the ages to justify the
over-concentration of power in a few inefficient self-serving hands. However, that is the choice on offer as we Europeans
enter 2016.
However, what disappoints
me most about Ed’s piece is a complete lack of alternative vision. How about
this? Political union is scrapped. The EU reverts back to a European Community
of states. Some states able to qualify agree to a single currency, but under
the control of nationally-elected parliamentarians who rotate through an
oversight body. Other states remain part
of a single market which is the core of the project. There is a new political
settlement between those in a shared currency and those without to ensure
legitimacy, accountability, representation and influence are distributed in a
manner befitting a super-alliance of democracies.
In the wake of the November
Paris massacre I said I would abandon my support for Brexit. I had seen what
damage the Scottish independence referendum had done to Britain’s capacity to
act in a crisis. Make no mistake Europe is not just in one crisis but several
and Brexit will indeed critically undermine the capacity of Europeans to deal
with them. However, the solution is not to abandon everything that we stand
for, to spit on the legacy of my forebears who fought and died in the fight
against Fascism and sovietism only to create an EU that looks very like Orwell’s
Big Brother. If that is what is on offer I want out of the EU
and my country with it.
In 1984 Winston Smith works in the Ministry of Truth. He is tasked
with re-writing history to justify the current political position of the
Administration. Smith changes newspaper and magazine articles to remove ‘unpersons’.
However, in the end Smith is broken by ‘the Party’ and forced to accept the assertion
that 2+2=5. Sadly, I fear something not
dissimilar is going to happen during the run up to next year’s Brexit referendum
now that it has emerged that both Downing Street and the European Commission
are going to rig the vote by massively outspending those campaigning for Britain
to leave.
2+2=5? Is this all we have
to aspire to in Europe, Ed? Is the only justification you can come up with for
your ‘empire’ is that its collapse could be marginally worse than its survival?
You are right, the EU Empire is indeed a mess and needs fixing. However, we
must not “stick by it” at any cost, which is precisely what you appear to be
suggesting.
Happy New Year, Ed!
Julian Lindley-French
Wednesday 23 December 2015
2016: Ttipping Point?
Alphen, Netherlands. 23
December, 2015. 2016 will be a tipping point for the West between power and
weakness. The other day I spoke at an event at the Clingendael Institute here
in the Netherlands on the planned Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
(TTIP). Most of my colleagues were focused on technicalities and what for me
are justified concerns about the relationship between power and the individual
in the West. The elite penchant for grand architectures such as the EU and TTIP
are shifting the balance of power away from democracy towards bureaucracy; efficiency
at the expense of accountability through the creation of sham democracy.
Equally, in a room in
which there were many elephants implicit in the debate over TTIP was the
creation of a new American-centric West. Indeed, if one combines TTIP with the
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) a new form of West becomes apparent, one which
is more idea than place. All well and good? Well no. The problem with such grands dessins as TTIP, TPP and indeed
the EU, is that far from aggregating the capacity of states to act experience
suggests such architectures exaggerate inaction. The EU is the most obvious and
dangerous example of that.
Western powers
will need to act. From Libya to Syria and on to Afghanistan the anti-state is defeating
the state and by extension the West. This morning David Miliband, Chairman of the
International Rescue Committee, described the world as “interlinked but
instable”. In Afghanistan the Taliban are threatening to take Sangin, a key
strategic town in Helmand province in Afghanistan which over 100 British
soldiers died defending between 2006 and 2014. If Sangin falls the chances of
President Ashraf Ghani creating an inclusive Afghan state in which the Pashtun
tribes invest will be much reduced and Western strategy will again be seen to have
collapsed.
And yet 2016 will see the
West on strategic hold. The US presidential elections will consume much of
America’s political energy. Sure, the US administration will go onto automatic
and holding operations will be conducted across the world. However, as America
debates its next president much of the world’s many contended spaces will be
vulnerable to adversaries. Russia will continue to be the West’s ‘frenemy’, co-operating
on Moscow’s pro-Assad terms in Syria (forget the talk of a new peace process as
Russia is not going to abandon Assad), whilst seeking to extend its influence
over an arc from the Baltic States in the north through to Georgia and Central
Asia to the south. Eurasian Union? China will continue its efforts to exclude
the US from the East and South China Seas and in so doing push forward its
long-term strategy to establish strategic hegemony over Japan, the Koreas,
Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines.
That EU will also continue
to fail in the face of an unfixed Eurozone and a chronically mismanaged
migration crisis. Then there is Brexit. It was strange listening to former
British Prime Minister Sir John Major the other day suggesting that the EU had
made Britain more prosperous, more secure, and more influential. The EU is hopelessly over-governed,
uncompetitive and insecure with much of the problem the EU itself! The EU’s
open borders have helped migrants and indeed terrorists march at will across Europe.
As for Britain Germany continues to block key areas of the Single Market which
favour Britain, whilst France and Germany force Britain into a form of serfdom
by denying Britain its rightful leadership place.
The only way to fix these
dangerous structural problems is to create a new EU. Moreover, experience
suggests a new EU will mean a) a new treaty; b) more elite bureaucracy in the
guise of ‘ever closer union’; and c) less democracy. The new EU will also need
a new political settlement for Britain and all non-Eurozone member-states if
cost is to be matched by benefit of membership which frankly is ever harder to
see. Whatever happens it will take years
before Europe’s infernal, eternal struggle over internal ‘ordnung’ is resolved
and Europeans can at last play the role to which they should aspire in the
world.
With an EU unable to act,
and major Europeans rendered incapable of action, Europe has been rendered effectively
impotent. Worse, two of Europe’s major state powers Britain and France are too
often constrained to act by the EU, whilst Germany now apparently takes it for
granted that European ‘integration’ should effectively mean the abandonment of sovereignty
by all other EU member-states abandon so that Berlin can govern Europe through Brussels.
Reminds me of something.
Worse, the very existence
of European states is now threatened by the Balkanisation of Europe. The EU
helped almost destroy my country Britain in 2014 and could do so again if
England votes to leave the EU next year and Scotland does not. Indeed, all European states with significant
minority groups are now threatened because minority nationalist groups invariably
look to Brussels as an alternative to national capitals. This week Corsican
separatists were elected in what is a region of France.
For all the above reasons
2016 will be a tipping point. Until and indeed only if, the Americans elect a
president willing and able to re-commit the US to leadership and the major
European state powers break out of their EU-induced strategic torpor my fear is
the West will continue to retreat. Sadly,
the world will be a far more dangerous place for the West’s retreat.
Hold on to your hats!
2016 is going to be a bumpy ride.
Merry Christmas!
Julian Lindley-French
Thursday 17 December 2015
2015: The Best Case for the Worst Case
Libenter homines id quot volunt credunt – Men freely believe whatever
they want.
Gaius Iulius Caesar –
De Bello Gallico
Upper Reading Room, Bodleian
Library, Oxford, England. Another world, another time. This is quite simply my
favourite room in the world. Oxford’s oldest library drips with past learning.
Before me the spires and cupolas of All Soul’s College stand proud. To my right
the Radcliffe Camera soars in its Enlightenment certainty. Sadly, it is that very
‘certainty’ that today seems so alien in a world that teeters between the spires
of creation and Stygian destruction. Last night I was a guest at the Royal
United Services Institute to listen to the Annual Christmas Lecture by General
Sir Nicholas Houghton, the UK Chief of Defence Staff. His subject was Britain’s
newly-minted Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR 2015) and his theme
“Interesting Times”. I think that was British under-statement as I came away
somewhat impressed, but also worried.
The test of good strategy is what
happens when it fails. Sir Nick
delivered a solid speech that tip-toed between Britain’s invisible dividing
lines of strategy, politics, diversity, and hard reality. At the end of his
speech I posed a question. It was not perhaps one of my better conference
questions as to put it bluntly I am knackered (tired). It has been a long year,
I have worked and travelled extensively, and I need a break. However, Sir Nick
clearly missed my point which was this. There is no mention of ‘war’ in SDSR
2015 beyond dismissing it out of hand. This to my mind suggests little appetite
for the kind of worst-case planning upon which all sound defence reviews should
be established. My question couched the challenge of ‘war’ in the context of
Russia and the possibility of a major war in the Middle East. Thankfully, my
friend Professor Paul Cornish added acuity to my rather blunt edge by raising a
potentially aggressive China.
My point was not to suggest that
Russia is about to embark upon a major war, but rather that such a war should no
longer be dismissed as a planning scenario. To my mind there is a critical
weakness in SDSR 2015 and the thinking behind it, in what is otherwise a solid
security and defence review. Moreover, it
is a weakness that is not exclusive to SDSR 2015 and which helps to explain the
failure of Europe’s elites to deal with the crises that are now breaking over and
upon Europe.
Any worst-case strategic analysis
worthy of the name would have suggested that a) Russia under President Putin
was eventually going to prove difficult; b) in the wake of the 2010 Arab Spring
parts of the Middle East and North Africa were going to explode/implode; and c)
given the complex nature and interaction between Middle Eastern, North African,
South Asian, and Western European societies political Islamism would create some
friction.
Unfortunately, the refusal to think
worst-case is compounded by worse-case change. An over-stretched American military,
a rapidly shifting balance of military power between the non-US liberal ‘West’
and an illiberal Rest, and a financial crisis that devastated European security
and defence credibility is pushing the worst-case ever closer to being the
here-and-now case.
Just look at the 2015 (about to
become the 2016) migration crisis. Given the mix of rapidly rising birth-rates,
failing states, proximity, access, organised crime, and the gulf between rich
Europeans and poor Arabs and Africans, it should have been clear to Europe’s that
sooner rather than later huge numbers of the latter would up sticks and move to
the lands of the former.
European leaders even had
advanced warning of mass migration a decade ago when western European labour
markets were opened up successively to eastern Europeans. What leaders had
hoped for was the managed movement of a relative few. What they got was mass movement
to the West took place which in Britain’s case has been so badly managed it
could actually drive the UK out of the EU. The tragic irony is that freedom of movement within
Europe is one of Britain’s great triumphs in helping to win the Cold War.
The essential problem is that to
think worst-case one needs a political culture robust enough to countenance the
worst-case. However, because politicians so assiduously avoid the worst-case
(even in private) the strategy piece of a defence review is rarely permitted to
demonstrate that thinking is being conducted into the unthinkable. Rather, too
many European politicians see the worst-case as devil’s work; as though those
of us prepared to think the unthinkable actually want the unwantable. In fact
we think the unthinkable precisely to ensure it remains at worst thinkable. The
failure to think the unthinkable is now all too plainly visible in the form of
the migration crisis.
The reason Europe lacks the systems
and controls to cope with mass migration is precisely because European leaders
refused to think the unthinkable, just as they did with Russia’s seizure of
Crimea. This is because much of the European Project and the culture it
espouses is built on an incredibly rosy view of how people behave. Consequently,
EU structures, such as they exist, are often a series of Potemkin villages,
flimsy facades which stand proud in the good time but have little or nothing to
prevent them from collapsing in a storm. Schengen is the most obvious example; a
non-structure that ISIS is exploiting to deadly effect.
In a recent blog I gave SDSR 2015
7 out of 10. Sure, SDSR 2015 contains all the right buzzwords, as did Sir Nick’s
speech; ‘utility’, ‘agility’, ‘strategy’, ‘diversity’, ‘innovation’, and that
hoary old favourite ‘partnership’.
However, like much that passes for strategic thinking in Europe SDSR 2015
is still grounded in a culture of best-case planning, or how much threat can we
afford. Indeed, the review too often
smacks of the old Ten Year Rule. Adopted in August 1919 the Ten Year Rule stated
that “…the armed forces should draft their estimates on the assumption that the
British Empire would not be engaged in any great war during the next ten years”. 2015 is not 1919, or even 1989.
SDSR 2015 is certainly better than
SDSR 2010 but it still too easily allows SDSR 2010’s Future Force 2020 to now
morph into Joint Force 2025. Given what
has happened over the last 15 year defence planning cycle can we really afford
to be so complacent about the next 15 year defence planning cycle?
2015 has highlighted the strategy
malaise at the top of European power and the refusal of leaders to countenance
the worse-case. Surely, if 2015 has taught us anything it should be that we
must collectively return to worst-case, not best-case planning. The latter will
inevitably create structures and forces which will fail. Only the former can
generate the necessary strength ad redundancy upon which sound security and defence
are necessarily built.
2015: interesting times indeed. And
surely the best case for the worst case.
Happy New Year and all that!
Julian Lindley-French
Monday 14 December 2015
Europe: Between Republic, Empire and Chaos
“…no amount of power can withstand the
hatred of the many…For fear is but a
poor safeguard of lasting power; while affection, on the other hand, may be
trusted to keep it safe for ever”.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Alphen, Netherlands. 14 December.
Ten days ago on a flight from Amsterdam to Rome I re-read some of the Phillipicae; the fourteen great orations
made by Marcus Tullius Cicero between 44 and 43 BC condemning Mark Anthony for
his campaign to replace the Roman Republic with a permanent ‘Dictatorship’ in
the wake of the March 44 BC assassination of Julius Caesar. One of Cicero’s
many conceits was his belief that he could protect the Republic by supporting
the adopted son of Caesar, Octavian. It was to prove one of history’s great
miscalculations. Octavian went on to
become the emperor of emperors and destroyed what was left of the Republic, albeit
in the very name of the Republic. A crude form of representative politics was
thus replaced by the executive power of one man; Octavian became Caesar
Augustus.
Last week in Bucharest I warned
of the dangers of power without strategy. Watching Europe’s leaders and the EU
fail to grapple with a succession of crises - the Eurozone, Libya, Ukraine, the
migration crisis, IS, and Syria - reminded me of the dangers of making strategy
without power. This week one of those seemingly interminable EU Summits will
take place after another momentous year of momentous elite failure. One reason
for the serial strategic failure of both the EU and European leaders is a
Europe that hovers dangerously and ineffectively between an uber-pluralistic ‘Republic’,
an ever-more centralised ‘Empire’, or just plain chaos. Europe really is at an historic tipping
point.
The EU has become a bloody awful
way NOT to do things. This week’s Summit will no doubt continue that dubious
tradition. EU leaders will no doubt talk at great length about the Eurozone
crisis, the migration crisis, Syria, Russia, and no doubt agree some
Euro-technocratic issues. David Cameron will no doubt prattle on about Brexit and
plead with his politely-disinterested fellow leaders to get him out of a
political mess that is entirely of his own making. Never has a leader believed
less in a policy of his own making, or defended it so badly. The Presidency
Conclusions of little Luxembourg will then be briefly discussed, before the
Netherlands is invited to sort out this unholy mess during the first half of
2016…and report back next June.
However, the one thing assembled
leaders will not discuss will be the greatest challenge the Europe and the EU
faces; how to aggregate enormous effective power through new ‘architecture’
without in so doing rendering said power so far from the individual citizen
that the EU becomes a bureaucratic empire, and a representative democracy in
name only. One of the many reasons the
Roman republic collapsed was the inability of Rome to govern an increasingly
diverse empire, preserve the delicate balance between Rome’s aristocratic
families who held power through the Senate, and hold meaningful elections that
gave the Roman citizenry some sense that they too had a say in and over power.
The essential question is what
balance to strike between collective and common action. The High Priests of Project
Europe would suggest the only way is for the collective approach itself to be
abandoned and ‘common’ policies be adopted in their place. In other words, if
Europe is to deal with big challenges it must create a big new state called ‘Europe’. However, the notion of ‘Europe’ is theology
not action and in any case its very forced creation (for that is what it would
have to be) would effectively mark the end of ‘Republic’ and the creation of ‘Empire’.
The genius of Caesar Augustus was
to continue with the form of representative politics, but destroy the substance.
Citizens stilled queued on the Campus Martius to vote, and Senators still met
to debate. However, neither group had any power or any real influence. Indeed,
the ballots they cast were meaningless, and the ‘laws’ they enacted simply
rubber-stamped the will of Caesar, much like the European Parliament does today.
Rome’s Imperial system worked for
a time because it was led by able emperors who understood that efficiency and
effectiveness were vital to ensure and assure one-man rule via the ‘legitimacy’
of delivery. Indeed, Roman ‘virtue’ became for a time equated with imperial
efficiency, effectiveness and, indeed, expansion. In effect Caesar Augustus
offered Roman citizens the same deal the Chinese Communist Party offers the
Chinese middle classes today – slavery in return for prosperity and stability.
However, the moment the emperors were no longer able to offer such a deal, or when
absolute power corrupted insanely and the likes of Nero and Caligula gained
power by right of succession, then Rome began its long descent to collapse and
chaos.
Liberal democratic state power is
the key to meeting Europe’s crises. Indeed,
Europe needs less common action and more collective action. Indeed, if Europeans
are to be led back to safety, starting right now, it is vital Europe’s power
states – Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain - act. Only then
will decisive action be at all possible and even vaguely legitimate. The EU
would continue to function as a Senate and debate and advise power. And, of
course, this new power oligarchy would need to be utterly sensitive to the
views of other Europeans. It would also help if the three seriously big powers
- Britain, France and Germany - could actually agree on big things and the need
for solidarity at this time of crisis. However, as the risks and threats
Europeans face together become ever more apparent Europe’s big powers will have
little alternative but to stand together or fall divided. As for the EU, it is
incapable of dealing with the crises Europe faces today, and too often is part
of the problem.
Getting that balance right between
power, action and legitimacy is the single most important strategic and
political challenge the EU faces today.
It is a challenge that must be met by power.
The EU: republic, empire, or just
chaos?
Julian Lindley-French
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