Syria: Putin Shakes the Tree

Alphen, Netherlands. 15 March. His Majesty King Abdullah of Jordan said that Russia’s September 2015 intervention in the Syrian war “shook up the tree”. With yesterday’s decision by President Putin to withdraw at least part of Russia’s forces from Syria President Putin gave the tree another good shaking. Why?

First, the facts. Since September 30th last year 48 Russian aircraft have flown over 9000 sorties and ‘liberated’ 400 communities over some 10,000 square kilometres. These operations have been supported by 2400 military personnel, comprised of armoured infantry, artillery, marines (naval infantry), Special Operating Forces (SOF), and reconnaissance units. In spite of the announced withdrawal it is clear that Russia will continue to maintain its strengthened naval supply base at Tartus on the coast to project power across the Mediterranean. The Russian Air Force will continue to operate an air-bridge to Russia from its airbase at Latakia to enable rapid reinforcement of President Assad’s forces. Russia will also continue to conduct cyber operations in Syria, and use its long-range bombers from their base in Dagestan.

Grand strategy I: Russia has succeeded in humiliating the West the political leaders of which have been reduced to impotent political hand-wringing over Syria (and much else). Not only has President Putin seized the agenda by revealing the weakness of the West he has in his mind helped renovate Russia’s wider strategic credibility.

Grand strategy II: Western sanctions on a fragile Russian economy are impacting the strategic room for manoeuvre of the Kremlin. By withdrawing forces from Syria and being seen to support the cessation of hostilities (and perhaps the Geneva peace talks) Moscow might convince Germany and France in particular to lift EU sanctions. In March 2015 EU leaders linked the lifting of sanctions to the implementation of the Minsk II agreement in Ukraine. If Moscow now moves to implement Minsk the pressure to lift the sanctions will grow.     

Regional strategy: President Putin has markedly enhanced Russia’s influence across the Middle East. As King Abdullah implied President Putin has also succeeded in getting most regional leaders to look to Moscow as well as Washington, whilst Brussels has been revealed as a toothless paper tiger. President Assad is in Putin’s pocket. Russia has established a de facto alliance with Iran. Russia is also helping to de-stabilise Turkey, a cornerstone NATO power. King Salman of Saudi Arabia is also understood to be keen to visit Moscow, but only when the bombing campaign is over.

Oil politics: As part of its regional strategy Russia also needs to see a marked increase in the price of oil. For President Putin an increased oil price is a critical Russian national interest. This goal is shared by other oil-producing states in the Middle East, including Iraq and Iran. That aim is also implicit in the planned visit of King Salman to Moscow.

Military Over-stretch: Russia wants to withdraw its force from Syria before its limitations are revealed. Even deploying a limited force over medium time and distance has proved challenging for Russian military commanders and planners. If the extent of those challenges were revealed it would undermine the entire cold hybrid warfare strategy Russia is engaged with in Central and Eastern Europe. The deployment is also proving expensive at a time when Russian public finances are stretched.

Ukraine: As a corollary to the military over-stretch challenge, and if President Putin so decides to act, the military campaigning season is about to begin in Ukraine. Critically, Russian forces can only conduct one medium-sized campaign at any one time. It is well-established that the taking of Mariupol by Russian-backed forces would in effect seal off much of eastern Ukraine and the Donbass from the control of Kiev. The seizure of Mariupol would also enable the separatists to negotiate a ‘peace deal’ from a position of strength.

Avoid another Chechen war: The Kremlin is acutely sensitive to the concerns of the Russian public about Russian forces once again becoming trapped in a military quagmire. Afghanistan in the 1980s, and the two Chechen wars of the 1990s, one of which was the personal responsibility of a newly-minted President Putin, remain painfully strong in the Russian popular-political consciousness.

Pressure on Assad: President Putin wants President Assad to hold presidential elections in Syria. President Assad has resisted the proposal because he knows that Moscow has a candidate in mind to replace him who is controlled by Russian military intelligence, the GRU, which is extremely active in Syria and environs.

Just shaking the tree: President Putin’s over-arching strategy concerns the playing of a relatively weak but coherent strategic hand to maximise Russian influence, against a far stronger but far less cohesive group of powers – the West.  Part of the strategy involves seizing every opportunity to appear to be the equal of the United States. Another part of the strategy is to keep European powers permanently off-balance, eternally unsure as to what an unpredictable Russia might do next…and where. This decision fits neatly into such a strategy.

Conclusions: First, President Putin remains wedded to an aggressive strategy of promoting Russian prestige at the expense of the West focused on extending influence around the entirety of Russia’s borders. Second, President Putin is prepared to act pragmatically in the short-term by shifting deployments, engagements, and rhetoric in an effort to keep the West divided by hinting at the prospect of co-operation. Third, when President Putin sees a chance to advance his influence strategy he will not hesitate to act decisively. And, if needs be, he will resort to force if an opportunity avails itself to him.

Recommendation: The West must speak softly, but carry a bloody big stick. Danger: The West, particularly the European West will engage in a lot of talk, but carry a little stick...or no stick at all!

Julian Lindley-French 

Why I Reject Brexit II

Alphen, Netherlands. 9 March. Over the past month I have been approached by a considerable number of people asking me to tighten up and re-post my arguments for rejecting Brexit. Over that period I have become more convinced than ever that my decision is the correct one for a raft of strategic reasons. Critically, I am convinced that Europe stands on the edge of several strategic and political precipices and could well see more change in the next five years than in the preceding fifty. Therefore, it is vital that Britain not only help prevent disaster, but seize the opportunity now afforded London to better shape Europe's future.  

Strategy not Politics

My decision has nothing to do with the political chicanery of late. David Cameron's so-called 'reforms' are at best minor tinkering and at worst pretence. First, there will be no reform of the EU per se under the Cameron plan. Second, with a few window dressing minor adjustments most of the so-called ‘new’ arrangements actually exist under current treaty provisions. Third, the agreement confirms that Britain will not at any point be part of EU structures of which it is already NOT a part, most notably the Euro, Schengen, and ever closer political union.

In other words, this agreement is a least possible on offer agreement to get a line of least resistance politician out of a domestic political corner entirely of his own making. Not only has David Cameron missed a very real opportunity to show real leadership and push a real EU reform agenda, history will now judge him as one of Britain’s lesser prime ministers.   

There will certainly be days when I will regret this decision as there is much about the EU I really do not like at all, most notably the threat to democracy posed by Brussels and ever closer union. The European Parliament is a rubber-stamping supreme soviet packed full of federalists and enjoys little or no popular legitimacy.

However, while I remain a confirmed EU-sceptic I am not, nor have I ever been, a Euro-sceptic. Indeed, I have long been firm in my belief that it is vital European states work closely together in a dangerous world that is getting more dangerous by the day. Nor am I particularly bothered by some of the issues that excite many of the ‘outers’. For example, I see freedom of movement within the EU as one of the freedoms for which Britain fought the Soviet Union during the Cold War. 

Therefore, as a strategist, analyst and historian, some say a good one, I simply believe that this is NOT the moment for Britain to leave the EU. Moreover, even though I am only an individual British and EU citizen, which means I count for very little in today’s EU, I still believe that all of us must at times show leadership. This is one such moment, not only for my country, but for the community of which it is a part, be it within the EU or without. 

Strategic Judgements

The simple truth is that I am confronted by a complex set of interacting realities from which no clear course of action is apparent, in a strategic environment which is markedly more dangerous than back in 2010 when I called for Britain to leave the EU.  At such moments the good strategist weighs up the factors, considers their implications over the medium to longer-term, and then relies on strategic judgement to reach a decision. The critical strategic judgements supporting my decision are based on the following assumptions:

The integrity of the United Kingdom: It is clear that the UK remains a fragile political edifice in the wake of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. If England voted to leave the EU at the 23 June Brexit referendum and Scotland did not the separatists in the Scottish Nationalist Party would again call for Scottish independence. For those of us who believe it is vital the UK endure for both strategic and political reasons the SNP regime in Edinburgh, which is now fully empowered with devolved authority, must be given both time and opportunity to fail. 

The shifting balance of power within Europe: In December 2013 the Centre for Economic and Business Research suggested that by 2030 Britain could emerge as Europe’s strongest economic power. Britain is already on track to regain its position as Europe’s strongest and most capable military power. The CEBR position may well be over-stated and ever-so-slightly hubristic.  However, it is clear that fears of German hegemony have been over-stated. Germany’s poor leadership of Europe’s now many crises, and the eclipsing of Chancellor Merkel’s political star, allied to the inevitable decline of an unreformable France that simply wants more ‘Europe’ to save itself from itself, clearly point to a shift of power within the EU. If correct the critical future power relationship within the EU will be between London and Berlin.  

Pressure for EU reform will grow:  In his September 2015 “State of the Union” address European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker confirmed that in 2017 the EU will begin the long-process towards a new Treaty on European Union to be completed by 2023. Juncker clearly thinks a crisis-hit EU will automatically lead to Europeans wanting more ‘Europe’ and thus less democracy. In fact, a new treaty is more likely to lead to a balancing of powers within the EU between common and inter-governmental structures in favour of the latter. Therefore, if Britain is to leave it should do so in 2023 not now. Indeed, given the so-called 'constitutional lock' that is now enshrined in British law ANY further transfer of powers to Brussels would in any case trigger another referendum. The irony for the British is that whether they vote for or against Brexit Britain will probably end up in the same political place - a kind of associate membership. 

The end of political union: The dream of euro-federalists such as Juncker have been dealt a real blow by the Eurozone, Russia, and migration crises. His efforts to find ‘common’ solutions, i.e. more power for Brussels, have repeatedly foundered on two simple facts of European life: a) there is growing EU-scepticism across Europe; and b) a majority of Europeans and their leaders still remain firmly wedded to their nation-states. Clearly, there are now limits to just how much power Europe’s states, or more importantly Europe's increasingly savvy peoples, are willing to hand over to the distant Brussels elite. 

The Eurozone v non-Eurozone: When I called for Britain to leave the EU back in 2010 it was because I believed at the time that the only way to save the Euro was for the Eurozone to deepen economic, political and fiscal union. Those outside the Eurozone I feared would be forced to 'pay without say' in a Union in which the EU and the Eurozone were effectively one and the same. In fact, efforts to deepen the Eurozone have proven to be extremely complex and difficult causing much resentment amongst the taxpayers of the six western European states who in reality pay for it. Six years on and it is clear that the EU is dividing into a Eurozone and non-Eurozone bloc. Britain’s relative power if used properly (a big ‘if’ given the poor quality of Britain’s leaders) should ensure London emerges to lead the non-Eurozone bloc. Power and the need for Europe to compete or fail will afford the City of London the protections the British seek from the ‘ambitions’ of the Eurozone bloc, and the stifling regulations of the European Commission.
   

Democracy, sovereignty & subsidiarity: The Dutch have a saying, “Europe where necessary, the states where possible”. English political culture has always rightly distrusted distant political power. Born of the likes of Burke, Locke and Mill the English (and dare I say Scots – Hume & Smith?) have traditionally mistrusted continental Colbertian grands dessins which somehow always end up affording excessive power to distant executives at the expense of local legislatures. However, Britain is not alone with such concerns. Dutch Prime Minister Marc Rutte has said openly that the idea of a super-state is now dead. Therefore, in alliance with partners Britain’s growing power and influence could help protect all Europeans from the democracy-crushing ambitions of ‘we know best’ politicised Eurocrats, treaty-pushing Euro-judges at the European Court of Justice, and centralising Euro-bankers at the European Central Bank.

Political distraction: The run-up to the September 2014 Scottish referendum took Britain strategically off-line for two full years. Had the Scots voted to quit the United Kingdom London would still today be mired in squabbles about the minutiae of disengagement and Scottish independence. An easily distractable London that is all too ready to sacrifice strategy for politics would be locked into a process that would be weakening not just itself, but Europe and the wider West at a critical moment. Endless squabbles would doubtless be creating deep mistrust between the English and Scots that no amount of political blandishments could hide. If Britain votes for Brexit not only would London and Brussels also become mired in an extremely complex set of negotiations (the never-meant-to-be-triggered Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty), such squabbles would also cause rancour between Britain and others at a time when Europeans must vitally stand together to face major crises to their south, their east and from within.

Solidarity: The other day I was standing in the snow not far from the Russian border in Lithuania. I had already begun to shift my position on Brexit in the wake of the November 2015 Paris massacre, and in the face of the challenges posed by Russia, Islamic State, and massed irregular migration, none of which existed in 2010. My final strategic judgment is this; the need to stand firm with my Baltic and French friends, and indeed my Greek, Italian and other under pressure European friends, FOR THE MOMENT outweighs my concerns about the future governance of Europe and Britain’s place therein.  Critically, I fear Brexit could also undermine NATO and the wider transatlantic security relationship at a critical moment.

Britain Does Not Quit

There is one final reason why I will not be voting for Brexit: Britain does not quit. Throughout Britain’s history London has never run away from a fight over who controls Europe. The control and direction of Europe is simply too important a critical national British interest. Phillip II of Spain, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Kaiser Bill and Hitler were all seen off because England (and then Britain) stood firm.  Therefore, precisely because Europeans today face serious dangers from without Europe (and serious question within) and because a new fight for the control and direction of Europe is about to begin I believe it vital Britain stand firm and stand tall to deal with them, as Britain has always done, and I hope always will.

To sum up, I am rejecting Brexit precisely because Europe is in crisis. The decision I have made is a big one and a part of me is really uncomfortable with it. Moreover, I have absolutely no doubt that once over the stress of break-up my old, great country possessed of the world’s fifth biggest economy, and a top five world military power, could and would flourish. Moreover, I am also fully aware that I am gambling on Britain’s future. It may well be that the moment the British people vote to remain in the EU Brussels will seek to tear up the Cameron agreement and behave as if nothing had happened to challenge their cherished goal of a European super-state. 

What really matters is that my important decision is a decision arrived at freely by a free-born Englishman. Henceforth, I will fight in all and any way I can to ensure the EU is properly reformed so that my birth-right is protected. No-one has got to me, I have not lost my political nerve, nor am I seeking to assuage political masters as I have none. Moreover, I am in no way seeking to gain opportunistically from this decision. However, on balance (and it is on balance) I am now of the opinion that if Britain really wants to reform the EU it must stay within it and fight for it.  

Julian Lindley-French

Spitfire!

“Let thunder rumble! Let lightning spit fire!”

Act 3, Scene 2, “King Lear”, William Shakespeare

Alphen, Netherlands, 7 March. In September 2014 I had the distinct honour to accompany General Mick Nicholson, then commander of the legendary US 82^nd Airborne Division to the British war cemetery at Oosterbeek, Arnhem, here in the Netherlands. The event was to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of Operation Market Garden and the massed airborne assault by British, Polish, US and other Allied troops in what proved to be a failed attempt to secure three major bridges and thus open the door to Germany for Field Marshal Montgomery’s XXI Army Group. It was a great honour and deeply moving to be amongst the veterans of so many nations, including Germans – a day of respect and of reconciliation – organised wonderfully by the Dutch. Towards the end of the ceremony a murmuring thoroughbred thunder echoed across the respectful throng. It was a sound that for most Britons of a certain age immediately sets hairs on the back of necks a-tingling. Suddenly, the signature Rolls-Royce Merlin engine soared high in salute. Spitfire!

Eighty years ago this weekend the first prototype Spitfire took to the skies from what is today Southampton Airport. K5054 was the genius of Supermarine Aviation’s Chief Designer R.J. Mitchell, who would be dead from cancer a year later. Thankfully, development of the Spitfire was taken on by the equally brilliant Chief Draughtsman Joe Smith. The Spitfire went on to play a crucial role in the RAF’s victory in the 1940 Battle of Britain against the Luftwaffe, and to play a vital role in establishing Allied air supremacy later in the war.

Much has been written about the Spitfire, and a lot of myths made. Indeed, propaganda dictated that the Spitfire was already a legend early in its lifetime. In fact, the Spitfire really was one of the greatest single-seat fighters ever built; the ultimate symbol of British defiance, brilliance, innovation, and power.  However, whilst the combination of Mitchell’s brilliant design, the Rolls Royce Merlin engine, and eight Browning 303 machine guns made it a powerful weapon the ‘Spit’ was by and large matched by the Messerschmitt Bf-109E, its primary adversary in the early stages of World War Two. Indeed, armed with heavier cannon and a fuel-injected engine the Me109 was in many ways a superior aircraft.

What made the Spitfire truly great was the flexibility of its design airframe. Whilst in 1940 the Me109 had just about reached the limits of its design upgrades the Spitfire was just getting started. By the end of World War the Spitfire Mk XXIV was a wholly different aircraft to the Spitfire MkIIa which fought the air battles of the Battle of Britain alongside its more rugged companion the Hawker Hurricane.

German fighter ace Adolf Galland tells an apocryphal story in his memoirs. In early 1943 he dived to attack what he thought was a squadron of Spitfire MkIXs. Armed with the new Focke Wulf 190, which had been specifically designed to negate the advantages of turn the Spitfire held over the Me109, Galland expected an easy victory.  Suddenly his targets not only began to out-turn him at one point. as he climbed to escape a Spitfire piloted by fellow ace Stanford Tuck, his enemy rose alongside him. The new Spitfire Mk XII he had just encountered looked pretty similar to a Mk IX, but was to all intents and purposes a new more powerful, and more agile fighter. Indeed, from June 1940 onwards Spitfires had been progressively re-armed with harder-hitting cannon.

22,759 Spitfires and Seafires were constructed between 1936 and 1948. The last production Spitfire –F Mk XXIV VN496 - left the production line at Castle Bromwich on February 20^th, 1948.   Between 1936 and 1948 the Spitfire was re-engined with the more powerful Rolls Royce Griffon power-plant, and spawned a host of spin-offs, most notably the Seafire, a navalised Spitfire, and the Spiteful which bestrode the piston-engine and jet engine ages. 

There has also been much movie-induced myth-making about the role British technology played in the winning of World War Two. One key myth is that British technology was consistently ahead of German technology and that the Spitfire was proof of that. This is patent nonsense. There were key areas of innovation, such as rocket, missile and jet technology, in which the Germans held a distinct advantage. However, when I was writing my Oxford thesis on British policy and the coming of war I found the cabinet minute that would lead to the Spitfire. It sat in the record close to 1934 decisions that would also eventually lead to the Chain Home radar system, the Lancaster bomber, and key decisions to better prepare British industry for war.

Therefore, placed in its proper policy context the Spitfire demonstrated one vital British advantage over Nazi Germany; the British better allied policy, strategy, and technology than their German counterparts. When a proven design was found it was exploited to the full as part of realisable strategy. Whereas the German approach was too often hampered by fantasy strategy that led to competing designs by competing factions resulting in fabulous technologies that were ultimately marginal to the winning of the war.

Not far from where I live there is a single, lonely grave in a provincial Belgian cemetery. It is cast from the same white Portland stone that marks the final resting place of hundreds of thousands of British servicemen who gave their lives for the freedom of the part of Continental Europe in which I live. It is the grave of a young RAF Spitfire pilot who died in October 1944 for the liberty of Belgium, the Netherlands…and Luxembourg.

 Spitfire!

Julian Lindley-French    

     

A Tale of Two NATOs

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

Brussels and Milan. Week commencing 29 February. This week has for me been a tale of two NATOs. It has also been very sobering. On Wednesday I spent the day at NATO Headquarters in Brussels being briefed by senior NATO officials on Alliance planning in my capacity as Vice-President of the Atlantic Treaty Association and in support of our president, my good friend Fabrizio Luciolli. Yesterday, I had the honour of chairing someone hundred senior officers from across the Alliance at the Eagle Eye Seminar for NATO Rapid Deployment Corps, Italy (NRDC-ITA) near Milan.

Let me be clear. The job of this blog is to speak truth unto power. My aim is to do so in a respectful manner and to respect the insights into policy and planning I am given. This responsibility is something I take very seriously indeed. And, for obvious reasons I cannot and will not go into details. Equally, as a NATO citizen and taxpayer I will not stay silent when I witness dangerous nonsense. Indeed, I have a duty to my friends in the east and south of our Alliance to speak out. Frankly, this week I witnessed an enormous and growing chasm between what NATO HQ thinks is happening at the military sharp-end of the Alliance, and the reality.  

What is causing this chasm? In a private conversation one officer said to me that there were not only two NATOs, but three. The NATO political structure seemed to exist in one bubble, the NATO command structure in another bubble, whilst the NATO force structure existed in an entirely different bubble of its own.  

Let me illuminate this point. At NATO HQ the emphasis was on preparing a successful Warsaw Summit in July. This is not the first time I have witnessed the ‘summits for summits sake’ culture that permeates NATO’s upper political and policy corridors. It is not the fault of those charged with the mission of preparing. The fault lies as ever with the Alliance’s (mainly European) strategically-inept politicians. They are driving a retreat from the uncomfortable but necessary culture of worst-case policy planning, into a culture that can best be described as ‘we only recognise as much threat as we can politically afford’.

Let me put my concerns in my strategic perspective. Much will be made by Alliance political leaders at the Warsaw Summit of the progress made since the benchmark NATO Wales Summit of September 2014. There will indeed have been some progress. Specifically, much will be made of the development of the so-called Spearhead Force or Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF) and the enhanced NATO Response Force. However, it is all too little, and possibly too late.

For example, critical to the development of those two vital forces is the exercising and training vital to render then credible as forces (and thus deterrents). At NATO HQ in Brussels I was told that the exercising of those forces was not just a central policy plank, but that it was being driven forward at speed and to effect. In Milan a day later I was told the complete opposite by the people on the front-line. The exercise planners were being starved of funding and the lessons-learnt from each major exercise was not being properly acted upon across the Alliance force structure mainly due to issues of cost. Worse, whilst NATO’s cutting edge forces looked good on paper they lacked critical elements, particularly key enablers and logistics. This is nonsense!

Critically, the planning assumptions behind the forces seem to bear no relation to what an adversary, such as Russia, could bring to bear in the early phases of a rolling and aggregating hybrid warfare campaign against the Baltic States. Again, I will not reveal details but the bottom-line is this; Russia could bring far more forces far more quickly into action than NATO. As I remarked yesterday; if deterrence fails NATO is faced with the option of either fighting a long war, or accepting the de facto loss of the Baltic States. This is again absolute nonsense!

Furthermore, there seems to be absolutely no global situational awareness at NATO’s upper levels or little appetite to really consider just how dangerous the situation is across the Middle East and North Africa. Specifically, the implications for Europe of wholesale state collapse across the region are enormous. What if a conflict breaks out in Asia-Pacific in parallel? Would an over-stretched America be able to continue to fill the gaps in Europe’s defences caused by the strategic indolence of its leaders? Again, this is nonsense!    

      

Political irresponsibility at the highest level is fast turning NATO into the strategic equivalent of a Potemkin village, a beautiful façade that hides a vacuous reality. Therefore, if the Warsaw Summit achieves anything it MUST begin to close NATO’s yawning strategy-reality-capability-affordability gap by refocusing all Alliance structures on the worst-case. If not our enemies and adversaries will drive a big red London bus (or perhaps a Russian tank) straight through the enormous chasm that now exists between what the political and policy leaders seem to think military NATO can do, and what military NATO can actually do.  This is really nonsense!

The bottom-line is this; effective NATO deterrence will only be established if NATO’s forward presence is in strength, reinforced by a properly enhanced NATO Response Force, which in turn is allied to a credible ability of Alliance forces to overcome Russia’s growing and impressive anti-access, area denial (A2AD) capability. And that said NATO forces are able to deploy in sufficient force and time to match Russian deployments. At present that is not the case. Indeed, it is still far from being the case.

Do you get that leaders?

Julian Lindley-French

Disarming Appeasers

Alphen, Netherlands. 29 February. Last Saturday was ‘déjà vu all over again’. Indeed, I was cast in a trice back to my 1970s youth as London saw the largest gathering of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) since the 1980s. The “Stop Trident” rally attracted the usual array of colourful political characters from the loony increasingly green left present in strength to ‘raise awareness’ of a whole raft of nuclear-related (and not-so-related) issues, to the considered, knowledgeable and principled activists who have always populated Britain’s anti-nuclear weapons movement. Saturday’s principle aim was to stop the British Government committing to a so-called ‘Main Gate’ decision to replace Britain’s four Vanguard-class nuclear-powered ballistic missiles submarines with four more by the late 2020s via the so-called ‘Successor’ programme.  In fact, the rally was about so much more…  

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not one of those commentators who dismiss such events or the people who attend them as a bunch of ‘disarming’ naïfs. By dint of its very secrecy the British nuclear establishment is far too comfortable in its self-reinforcing ‘certainties’.  Indeed, as someone who has studied both nuclear deterrence theory and strategy in depth (excuse the pun) and written about it, there are serious questions to be answered by London as to the cost, utility, and long-term viability of four state-of-the-art nuclear ballistic missile submarines.

As with most British ‘big ticket’ defence projects cost is spiralling out of control with over £40 billion of public money likely to be spent on ‘Successor’. Moreover, my November 2015 evidence to the House of Commons Defence Committee (HCDC) demonstrated to effect that the 2010 decision to move the cost of paying for the nuclear deterrent within an already over-stretched defence budget left Britain with the strategic Hobson’s choice it faces today. On current levels of defence investment Britain can either afford a strategic nuclear deterrent, or a global reach conventional expeditionary force. It cannot afford both. Indeed, Britain’s continually-at-sea-deterrent (CASD) is already vulnerable due to the lunatic 2010 decision to cut up brand new maritime patrol aircraft (MPA), a gap will only be plugged in the early 2020s with the purchase of eight Boeing P8 MPA at great cost.

Furthermore, concerns about the credibility of the Successor system over the fifty years of its planned in-service life are both real and reasonable. This week a report will be presented to HCDC by the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) that will suggest advances in drone technology, in particular so-called ‘gliders’, could render Britain’s future submarine fleet vulnerable to detection and attack. The threat to the force is more than the ‘old science fiction’ ascribed to this threat by one commentator.

However, few if any of these arguments of strategy and capability seemed to resonate at the CND rally. Even less so with grand attendees Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party Nicola Sturgeon. However, it was Lianne Woods, leader of Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalists, who really gave the game away. For her the ‘Stop Trident’ rally was merely a political metaphor and should really have been entitled; “Stop the world we want to get off”.

In a spectacular misunderstanding of history Woods claimed that the Cold War had been a narrow self-interested fight between the US and the USSR, and suggested that Britain should never have had any part of it. In fact, the Americans were persuaded by the Western Europeans with Britain to the fore, to return in strength to Europe in the late 1940s to defend a broken and broke Europe from over 300 of Stalin’s Soviet divisions which were sitting just across the River Elbe on the then inner-German border. Read my Oxford book on the subject!

Worse, to suggest some level of moral equivalency between the United States and the Soviet Union insults not just the Americans, but my own intelligence. It also insults the millions of American servicemen and women who defended Europe from Soviet aggression and writes off the huge investment the Americans continue to make in the defence of Europe today. It is a commitment made all the more remarkable by the unwillingness of Europeans to pay for their own defence. Woods reinforced her strategic illiteracy by suggesting that Britain’s nuclear weapons did nothing to deter terrorists. Derr!

And herein lies the ultimate irony of Saturday’s CND rally. The refusal of Europeans to make a reasoned link between the strategic dangers Europeans face from other states and conventional defence investment INCREASES the importance of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons exist to force the cost of any state aggression over a threshold that is so unacceptable that said aggression is deterred. In the absence of sufficient investment in conventional defences the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons actually falls. In the dangerous world of today there is every reason to believe that nuclear deterrence will continue to function for Europeans as an alternative to conventional defence investment. A Europe that cannot defend itself nor deter threats is appeasing reality.   

Which brings me to the real point of Corbyn, Sturgeon, Woods and their like; to disarm completely and remove Britain a top five world military power from the collective defence of Europe. Scrap Trident and ‘Successor’ and CND and their supporters will soon call for the scrapping of NATO. This must be music to the Kremlin’s ears. Indeed, it is the late 1970s and the Euromissile saga all over again. And, like the late 1970s I have no doubt Moscow, which is increasing its European nuclear strike forces, is doing all it can to encourage such well-meaning, but utterly strategically-misguided dissent.

Unilateral nuclear disarmament is appeasement – pure and simple. Saturday’s rally was not about Trident, Successor, or even British unilateral nuclear disarmament. It was pure strategic denial. The only way to rid the world of ‘nukes’ is multilateral disarmament. Any other approach makes the world less, not more safe.

For the sake of peace in freedom these disarming appeasers must be resisted.

Julian Lindley-French    

War and Change in Asia-Pacific

“Kings are the slaves of history”.

War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

Alphen, Netherlands. 25 February. War is coming. Big war. It will start not in Europe, but Asia-Pacific. Several events this past two weeks have convinced me that to think otherwise is simply denial, and thus makes the probable inevitable. What and why?

What? China is fast militarising the South China Sea. Last week China confirmed that it had deployed highly-advanced surface-to-air missiles on Woody Island in the South China Sea and had also installed a highly-advanced radar system on Cuarteron Reef in the Spratly Islands to the south.  This week the Pentagon confirmed that China had deployed fast jets to one of its reclaimed ‘string of pearl’ man-made islands that now ring the South China Sea. Reports by Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) also suggest China is installing advanced defence radars on three other islands.

Another Washington report by the Center for a New American Century (CNAS) warned that China is also developing advanced anti-ship missile technology which poses a direct threat to the ten US nuclear-powered super aircraft carriers. Whilst not the sole purveyors of US expeditionary might these ten ‘carriers’ are the very beating heart of American strategic power projection. Indeed, at least four carrier groups are normally at sea at any one time.

Taken together China’s new bases and its burgeoning anti-ship technology all suggest at some point in the none-too-distant future China will seek to force the US out of the South China Sea, and possibly East Asia. Senior American officers with whom I have spoken seem strangely complacent about the threat.  

However, it is not just Sino-American relations that are entering a new and more dangerous phase. It was also announced this week that India’s first nuclear ballistic missile submarine is about to join the Indian Navy. The INS Arihant is the first of five 6000 ton submarines that will join the Indian fleet in a move designed to counter both China and Pakistan. Pakistan is being helped by China to develop its own sea-borne counter-force in an attempt to force New Delhi to look both north and east at one and the same time, and thus prevent India from being able to concentrate force.

This week the Australian Defence White Paper will be published. It will state Canberra’s determination to increase Australian defence spending to some 2% GDP by 2023, with some $710 billion being injected into the country’s defence force by 2027. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said this week that, "It [the investment] will set out how we will give our defence forces the resources they need, the capabilities they need, to keep us safe and to ensure that we play our part in delivering and ensuring regional security."

Why? The reasons for what is fast turning into a strategic arms race are manifold. First, states across Asia-pacific are locked into hyper-competition as the region’s states struggle to cope with the rapid emergence of an over-mighty and illiberal China. The Asia-Pacific strategic arms race bears striking similarities to that which took place in Europe between 1898 and 1914 as Austria-Hungary, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Russia slid towards the First World War. Add Japan, South Korea and other regional states and the similarities become even more alarming.

Second, China is the main force behind the hyper-competition. Although China and the US agreed limited sanctions on North Korea this week in the wake of its recent intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test, it is the emerging Sino-American strategic stand-off which is at the centre of China’s concept of ‘security and defence’. Beijing’s hard-line political realism is also driven by the nature of the Xi regime. President Xi Jingping emerged from the military apparatus of the Communist Party. Moreover, he is determined to consolidate his power and that of the Party over China and extend China’s military influence far beyond China’s borders and is investing huge sums in the People’s Liberation Army to that end.

Third, such hyper-competition is simply the age-old pattern of international relations. One of my embarrassingly many degrees is a Masters in International Relations (with distinction of course). In “War and Change in World Politics” Robert Gilpin identified four stages between peace and war which liberal elites in the West today either reject, deny, or both. An international ‘system’ starts off in a state of relative equilibrium, which is where the world was briefly in the wake of the Cold War. Over time a redistribution of power takes place as revisionist powers seek to challenge the authority of status quo powers grown comfortable on their own victory. This is exactly what is happening today as the likes of China and Russia, and to a lesser extent Iran, challenge a West that has become strategically decadent. The system gradually falls into a state of disequilibrium as the rules of the status quo powers are challenged by the growing power of the revisionists. If not resolved peacefully at some point the system collapses into tension and crisis which is then ‘resolved’ by major war.

Today, the liberal West is trying to break this age-old cycle and the challenge of the illiberal realist powers in the same way it has done ever since 1919 and the Treaty of Versailles, and with the same old ‘tools’. Disarmament, in the form of low defence investment, or by destroying its own long-term defence planning as the Americans are doing via sequestration. Trade, in the form of ever-more-desperate invitations for the realist powers to ‘buy’ into the West, most notably Britain’s current self-auction to China. Indeed, trade was the ‘principle’ that underpinned appeasement in the 1930s. Institutionalism, in the form of ever more regimes membership of which is designed to constrain extreme state action. Mutual constraint was the founding principle of the League of Nations, the United Nations, and indeed the European Union. The one thing the West is not doing is investing in the one thing that deters the illiberal; power.

So, why war? To this old Oxford historian and analyst China, Iran, and Russia (partly) are doing exactly the same as revisionist powers over the ages; taking the blandishments on offer, helping the status quo powers retreat into denial and self-induced relative weakness, remorselessly building up their military might even at the expense of economic and social development, and waiting until they are sufficiently strong to prevail in a showdown that Beijing for one probably believes is inevitable.

So, let me conclude by qualifying my opening statement. War is coming, unless the world-wide West wakes up collectively and smells the strategic coffee. After all, for the illiberal power does as power will.

Julian Lindley-French                 

Britain lost an Empire, but never found a Union

“Great Britain has lost an Empire and has not yet found a role”

Former US Secretary of State Dean G. Acheson,

West Point, 5 December 1962

Alphen, Netherlands. 22 February. Dean Acheson’s famous quote about a Britain strategically adrift seems particularly apposite on this wet, grey Dutch February morning. With the weekend decisions of the heavy-hitting Justice Secretary Michael Gove and London Mayor Boris Johnson to join the swelling ranks of the Brexiteers there is now a very real chance that David Cameron’s EU gamble will fail spectacularly on 23 June. If Britain does vote to leave the EU it will not simply be withdrawal from an institution to which it acceded in 1973. It will be the first time Britain has ever withdrawn from an international institution, and the first time its political and bureaucratic elite have had to THINK for Britain as a strategically-independent power since 1815.

Hold on a minute, professor, I hear you say. 1815? Really? Yes, really. My point is this; for much of the nineteenth century Britain was simply too powerful to have to think strategically. It kept an eye on matters European, and after the 1815 Congress of Vienna occasionally got ‘involved’ to maintain the power balance in Europe. Most notably, and not without irony, during the 1853-1856 Crimean War when Russia was (again) being uppity. However, for the most part Britain withdrew into splendid isolation and got on with ‘managing’ its enormous empire.    

Furthermore, with the principle of effective self-government established by the Australian colonies in the mid-1850s the later British Empire gradually began to take on the appearance of an international institution. Imperial Conferences were held regularly at which the Mother Country consulted the Dominions, and indeed some of the larger colonies on matters of ‘strategic’ import. That is why when the British Empire effectively ended from India’s seizure of independence in 1947 thereafter, much of the Empire morphed with relative ease into the Commonwealth of today.

Thinking strategically is the preserve of the relatively weak. As the balance of power shifted in the late nineteenth century with the 1871 emergence of a unified Germany and the later appearance of Teddy Roosevelt’s America as world powers, Britain’s elite had to begin to think about relative decline and the crafting of strategy. It never came easily to them.

The solution the British sought was to return to the principles of coalition or grand alliance which London had so successfully used against the French in the eighteenth century, and thereafter to extend the concept of imperial conferences to all states. The anti-German Dual and Triple Ententes would have been approved of by both Pitt the Elder and Pitt the Younger as coalition mechanisms for the balancing of power in Europe. The League of Nations and its successor United Nations would have been recognised by the likes of Gladstone and Disraeli as extensions of the concept of imperial conference.

The problem with the early European institutions for the British elite was that by the very principle of their founding they were neither an imperial conference nor a coalition. In particular, the very idea of ‘ever closer union’ ran counter to the idea of a British-controlled or inspired assembly. Worse, they were not invented by the British. The British can very reasonably claim that the League of Nations, the United Nations, and even NATO were all British ideas. The European institutions were patently not.

Therefore, from the very outset the EU, and its now many forebears, presented a dilemma, and indeed represented a contradiction, for the British. On the one hand, a ‘not invented here’ institution had been created on the Continent that by the very nature of its Franco-German leadership side-lined the British. Indeed, the early EU (ECSC and then EEC) did unto Britain what Britain had done to continental powers since 1815. On the other hand, the European institutions were institutions.  By the 1950s whilst Britain maintained totems of great power Britain's foreign policy Establishment only really ‘did’ institutions, which became ends in and of themselves for British foreign policy.

Peer beyond the typically-astrategic Cameronian smokescreen of last week’s failed ‘renegotiation’, most of the tenets of which will be swept away by the European Parliament and the European Court of Justice, and two abiding British problems become clear. First, the EU has never been a British institution, and as such far from magnifying Britain’s power and influence it has diminished it by subordinating London to Berlin and Paris. Second, as an institution the EU does not really work.

Indeed, it is now clear that the process of partial-supranationalism that began with the 1991 Treaty of Maastricht and reached its zenith/nadir with the 1997 Treaty of Lisbon has failed. Moreover, the very process of big-Brussels building has at one and the same time eroded democracy in Europe, and by preventing the creation of flexible coalitions of any strength, also destroyed effective crisis management.

Equally, if Britain gives up on the EU now that too will have profound consequences. Indeed, if Britain leaves the EU in 2016 it will be the first time since, say, 1588, that England/Britain has withdrawn from the shaping of strategic political events at the heart of Europe at a critical moment. Indeed, the very real prospect now beckons that by sending troops to defend the Baltic States, and ships and aircraft into the Mediterranean to attack Islamic State and people smugglers under a NATO banner, Britain will be instrumental in creating a ‘safe’ space for others to decide the future of Europe, and thus Britain.  

2016 Europe stands at the most strategic of strategic crossroads – more elitist European institutionalism or more national coalitions of the willing and able? Come 2023 and a new Treaty of European Union will need to be ratified which will address such issues. That is after all what Jean-Claude Juncker himself has said. If the draft treaty proposes ever more power to Brussels Britain’s ‘constitutional lock’, which is now enshrined in law, would automatically trigger another referendum. Therefore, if Britain is indeed to leave the EU surely it would make more sense when the future strategic direction of travel of the EU has been established, and the scale of the threat posed by the likes of Russia and IS is clearer? After all, good strategy is not just about good thinking, it is also about good timing.

In other words, were the British thinking strategically they would realise what an opportunity is now afforded them for influencing the profound re-adjustment the EU and its member-states must make in the midst of the Eurozone, Russia, migration, and terrorism crises. Britain’s EU moment is thus NOW as Britain’s concerns are now shared by a majority of people on this side of the Channel. However, Britain can and will only influence Europe’s coming re-adjustment if it engages in the institutional process and injects strategic thinking.

So, why does Britain NOT think strategically? Institutionalism and short-termism. In my 2015 book Little Britain (www.amazon.com) I emphasise the extraordinarily lamentable quality of what passes for strategic thought at the heart of government in London. One reason is that the Establishment is so enmeshed in the incrementalism of institutions that they have lost the ability to think big and think strategically which on paper should come naturally to the leaders of a top five world economic and military power. Another reason is that 'strategy' has been remorselessly reduced to what is politically feasible on any given day.  The fact that the British Establishment produces strategically-lightweight political spin gurus such as David Cameron as 'PMs' is testament to these problems. Indeed, perhaps the biggest danger Britain faces comes not from Brussels at all, but rather the poor quality of its political leadership. Indeed, would the British Establishment be up to the challenge of leading a strategically-independent Britain?

Like all decent strategic analysts I have shifted my position on Brexit in light of events. To that end, Dean Acheson said one other thing about the British that is worth recalling. “The qualities which produce the dogged, unbeatable courage of the British, personified…by Winston Churchill, can appear on other occasions as stubbornness bordering on stupidity”.  I am no fan of the EU and I share many of the concerns of reasoned Brexiteers. Indeed, the time may well come when the EU is so inimical to Britain’s interests, so costly, and so crisis incompetent that Britain will be forced leave for the sake of all.  2016 is, I fear, not that moment.  

Julian Lindley-French