The Global West is All at Sea

THE GLOBAL WEST IS ALL AT SEA

By Julian Lindley-French

(This article has just appeared the October-December 2016 edition of The NAVY: The Magazine of the Navy League of Australia". It is reproduced with kind permission of the Editorial Board. The article has been adapted to fit the technical constraints of the blog).

"Britain now had world empire because she was the preeminent sea power; the lesson for Tirpitz was that if Germany wished to pursue Weltmacht, only possession of a powerful navy…could make it possible".

Castles of Steel, Robert K. Massie

The NAVY set this author an interesting challenge; to consider the maritime positioning of Australia,

Japan and the United States with regard to China. The challenge is interesting in two ways. First, my

first thought was that ‘maritime positioning’ was some form of dynamic navigation device. Second, my very British keel is firmly anchored in Dutch waters. And then I got to think. One of my theses is that the West is no longer a place but a set of liberal values, interests and strategic assumptions centred on the United States and shared by partners the world-over. And, that the very idea of the liberal West is being challenged by illiberal power the world over with much of that challenge emerging on, under, and above the sea. It is in that geopolitical context one must necessarily consider the ‘maritime positioning’ of Australia, Japan, and the United States with regard to China.

MARITIME POSITIONING

First, let me deal with what I mean by maritime positioning. It is the role of the respective navies of the three countries in relation to their own defence, all-important and evolving US grand strategy, and China’s own burgeoning geopolitical ambitions. This brief article will thus consider all three issues in turn before concluding by considering them all within the context of the global West.

The core message of the piece is direct; China’s naval challenge is not untypical of emerging illiberal powers. Beijing places much store on a powerful People’s Liberation Navy not just because such a force is a legitimate weapon for the world’s number two economy to possess. Powerful navies have always played well to the strategic egos of emerging powers – liberal and illiberal. China is little different from Imperial Germany at the turn of the last century in this regard. Like it or not, unless there is an unlikely new treaty that would limit naval armaments the likes of China and Russia will determinedly draw the liberal West into a naval arms race that in its scale and strategic implications will look a lot like that between Britain and Germany in the run-up to the First World War. The regimes in Beijing and Moscow simply cannot help themselves. So, where do Australia, Japan and the United States fit into this changing strategic maritime picture?

AUSTRALIA

The Royal Australian Navy is a small, modern western force. Traditionally, whilst designed first and foremost to safeguard Australia’s national interests in and around Australian waters, the RAN has always played a wider geopolitical role as a strategic adjunct to other navies. For many years the RAN was in effect a farflung flotilla of Britain’s Royal Navy. As Britain declined in the wake of World War Two the role of lead force was steadily usurped by the United States Navy. Today, with a force of fifty commissioned ships focused mainly on frigates and conventional submarines, augmented by some amphibious and mine countermeasure capabilities, the RAN is again playing an important strategic role reinforcing the United States Navy (USN), particularly when it comes to the latter’s role in protecting the global commons vital to the well-being and security of the global West. Contrary to what some in Australia seem to think the RAN is not a strategic force in and of itself and future planning would not suggest any real ambitions on the part of Canberra for the RAN to play such a role any time soon.

JAPAN

The Japanese Navy is not dissimilar in role and function to the RAN, even if it is markedly larger. Since the defeat of the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1945 and the adoption of the post-war Japanese constitution the role of Japan’s forces as self-defence forces has severely circumscribed any autonomous strategic role for Tokyo. This restraint has been applied rigorously to the Japanese Navy precisely because the Imperial Japanese Navy was at the very heart of Japanese power projection during World War Two. Like the RAN the Japanese Navy has for many years contented itself with guarding Japanese home waters and supporting the USN in maintaining a balance of power in East Asian waters and the wider Asia-Pacific theatre. So long as that balance was maintained the Japanese were content to play a purely defensive role as part of US naval and wider grand strategy. However, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s planned revision of the Japanese constitution would permit Japanese forces to play a more assertive role in defence of a wider understanding of Japan’s interests. This revision of Japan’s strategic stance ultimately reflects Abe’s own belief that the postwar balance of power in Asia-Pacific could at some point collapse. Abe has good reasons to be concerned.

THE UNITED STATES

One reason for concern in both Canberra and Tokyo is the growing global overstretch of US forces, in particular the USN. As the world’s only global power the United States looks increasingly like Great Britain in the 1890s when the naval challenge from Imperial Germany began to take shape. The Americans remain strong on paper but their forces are stretched thin the world over. Consequently, the illiberal powers now control the timing, the location, and indeed the manner by which they can choose to complicate American strategic calculation. It is a situation made worse by the political gridlock on Capitol Hill which for some years has been driving sequestration which in turn has badly damaged the US ability to undertake the long-term planning vital to strategic navies such

as the USN.

Worse, the threat to global power projection navies from smaller, regional actors is growing. The advent of super-silent submarine technology, navalised ship-killing drone and missile, and other technologies is making it ever easier to disrupt power projection and increase the cost and risk of effective sea control and sea presence. Such technologies are placing at risk the big, expensive platforms upon which a global reach navy like the USN rely upon to fulfil the global power policing role which has been thrust upon the Americans, not least because of the strategic and political

weakness of many key allies, most notably in Europe.

CHINA

The big change-agent in maritime affairs is China which today is playing a role very similar to Germany in European waters prior to World War One and Japan in Pacific waters prior to World War Two. China has been growing its defence budget at double digit percentage figures since 1989. The People’s Liberation Army Navy is developing a form of joint extended-reach strategic defence force with blue water capabilities that is fast tipping the balance of power in the South and East China Seas.

This change has profound implications for Australia, Japan and the United States when the now highly-likely confrontation eventually happens.

Chinese strategy is clearly designed to establish exclusive control over much of the South China Sea, to force Japan into subordination in the East China Sea, and by demonstrating that China not the United States will determine the strategic shape of much of Asia-Pacific force Australia and other regional powers to treat with Beijing on Chinese terms. If successful China would successfully reduce both the influence of US forces in the region and the value of strategic partnerships with the US for regional powers. The stakes raised by the Chinese challenge are thus very high indeed, with particular implications for Western navies.

ALL AT SEA?

So, what to do about it? Let me take contemporary Britain as an example. There has been a lot of nonsense written about the state/fate of the Royal Navy. Some of the misplaced Schadenfreude about the Royal Navy borders on self-mutilation. However, the Royal Navy is actually showing the way forward for all non-American western navies. Yes, there are short-term investment, technological, equipment, and personnel challenges faced by the Royal Navy. This is hardly surprising for a country that provided the second largest force in support of US campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq over thirteen long, attritional land-centric years. A country which had to endure a banking meltdown at the same time. Britain is roughly where the world’s fifth largest economy and top five military spender would expect to be after the last decade. Australia needs Britain to be strong – period!

The good news is that sea blindness in Britain is at an end.

RN’S RETURN TO STAGE

By 2023 the Royal Navy will again be one of the strongest power projection navies in the world. The commissioning of the two large 65,000 ton power projection carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales is proceeding. The Type-45s suffer from technical problems that are in the process of being fixed, and the new Astute-class nuclear hunter-killer submarines are powerful reinforcements of the British fleet, and for political reasons if nothing else the Type 26 frigates will eventually be built. 

What matters is the place of the Royal Navy in the British future force concept which is by and large correct given the nature of the coming global challenge. The mistake of the critics is to make false comparisons with the Corbettian Royal Navy of Empire or the not-at-all customary Mahanian moments of the 1914-1918 Grand Fleet or Sir Bruce Fraser’s 1945 British Pacific Fleet when the Royal Navy deployed seven fleet carriers to support a hard-pressed, Kamikaze vulnerable Nimitz.

No, the twenty-first century fleet the Royal Navy is constructing will sit at the command hub of future coalitions of Europeans and other navies. It will leverage the naval power of others with the strategic aim of helping to keep the USN strong where the USN will need to be strong at moments

of crisis. As such the future strategic Royal Navy will again buy Britain influence in Washington and elsewhere that no other ally will match. The RAN and Japanese Navy will need to play a similar role in Asia-Pacific if they are to remain relevant to the power game that is afoot. And, if Australia can overcome its sniffy attitude towards the Royal Navy and focus on the positives rather than routinely seek the negatives then there are a lot of lessons for both partner navies to learn from each other.

THE GLOBAL WEST. NAVIES AND STRATEGIC
LESSONS FOR AUSTRALIA

Security and defence are today globalised and Australia is part of the global West. If the likes of China and Russia continue to attempt to throw their illiberal weight around as they seem destined to do then India and other powers will no doubt seek the comforting embrace of

the Global West.

However, the Global West will not happen by itself. It needs partners like Australia, Japan, the US, Britain and others to see the role of navies therein for what they are; power projection forces of an American-centric global liberal community committed to maintaining a just balance of power. And, if needs be have the capacity and capability to project power via a necessarily blue water concept that affords influence, effect, and deterrence for ALL of its members.

Then, only then, will the new strategic arms race China and Russia are driving be seen to be folly and both Beijing and Moscow realise that such policy is simply the road to strategic and financial folly. That aim would in turn help re-institutionalise global security from which the two illiberal

powers are currently breaking out.

The navies of the Global West will have a vital role to play in such strategy precisely because alongside the USN they can project power, exert influence through sea presence and project power discreetly and decisively through sea control. In other words, the strategic role of Global

Western navies will necessarily need to merge both Corbett and Mahan

and organise to that effect.

Therefore, Australia needs to realise the vital role of the RAN in such a strategy and seek the strategic partnerships – new and old – equally vital to realising such a role. If for no other reason than for the sake of Australia’s own security in a world where nowhere is a strategic backwater and in which no-one can free-ride. In other words, this author’s Yorkshire worldview of navies must be little different from the Australian world-view.

Professor Dr Julian Lindley-French is Vice-President of the Atlantic Treaty Association, Senior Fellow of the Institute of Statecraft, Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow at the National Defense University, Washington DC, and Fellow, Canadian Global Affairs Institute.

The Brexit Norwegian Blue Debate

Oslo, Norway. 4 October. “This parrot is dead. It is an ex-parrot”, says parrot-purchasing Monty Python’s John Cleese in the famous parrot sketch. “No, no, he’s not dead. He’s resting. Remarkable bird the Norwegian Blue”, replies parrot-vendor Michael Palin. Watching what passes for Britain’s Brexit debate reminds me of the parrot sketch, not least because I am in Oslo. Actually, I am in Oslo to help launch a new book entitled “Ukraine and Beyond” which considers what to do about an aggressive Russia (which is of course brilliant and very reasonably-priced). However, parrots, Brexit and Norwegians seem to go together these days.   

Reason is the dead Brexit parrot, with truth lying mangled in the corner.  It is an ex-reason that is no more and has gone to meet its maker. On one side of the debate the Brexiteers suggest that exiting the EU will be straightforward when in fact it is plainly in the interest of so many powerful vested interests to make it as hard as possible. To suggest that post-Brexit Britain will have full access to the Single Market AND impose restrictions on free movement is pure Norwegian Blue (or is that bull). If agreed to by the EU the entire post-Lisbon edifice of an already shaky EU would crumble. On the other side, Remaniacs remain wedded to the falsehood that the poor little dears who voted for Brexit had not a clue what they were voting for and should be ordered to do it again, but this time get it right.

For all that being here in Norway does shed some light on Britain’s possible future. Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not one of those lunatics who suggests a Norwegian model for post-Brexit Britain. Britain is a top five world power with a population 65 million people, Norway is not. However, Norway is a member of the European Economic Area (EEA) which is a kind of EU-lite for those who want access to the EU’s Single Market, but do not actually want to join it. In Norway’s case one can see their point. EU membership for rich Norway would be utterly punitive as Brussels would almost certainly remove Oslo’s massive oil and gas-fuelled sovereign wealth fund in the name of ‘solidarity’ and to keep the eternal Euro disaster brewing.

And yet there are some pro-EU Norwegian politicians who will tell you what a terrible position Norway finds itself in. This is because to their mind Norway must pay but has no say. In fact, that is only partially true. Norway and the other three EEA members have proved remarkably adroit at getting EU directives amended. The real point about Norway’s relationship with the EU is a sovereign point. Norway has indeed chosen to pay a price for access to the Single Market, and part of that price is adherence to elements of the Free Movement Directive (FMD). But it is not the whole Norway-EU story.

As I was travelling this morning on the train from Oslo airport to Oslo Central Norwegian television was showing a criminal from Eastern Europe being deported. If that criminal had been convicted in Britain under the FMD the British would not have had the right to deport him as an EU citizen unless he posed an immediate threat to British (i.e. other EU) citizens.

Which brings me back to the Brexit dead parrot debate. This morning the normally sound Rachel Sylvester wrote in The Times: “The truth is that when nations prosper, by interacting with the rest of the world, it is impossible because of globalisation for any country to “take back control”. On the face of it Sylvester’s argument is sound. However, her use of the phrase ‘take back control’ is disingenuous. That phrase is a Brexiteer phrase and refers to their desire to remove Britain from the European treaties. Sylvester is instead referring to normal international treaties and quite deliberately conflating the two, when in fact there is a world of sovereign difference between them.

An international trade treaty is made between two or more sovereign states. They agree constraints upon their sovereign action to make the treaty work. However, they still remain sovereign actors free to make or break treaties as they so choose. The EU treaties, particularly (in sequence) the Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice and Lisbon treaties have become progressively different in both scope and ambition to traditional international treaties. EU treaties were and are designed to replace and thus abolish the nation-state by progressively transferring the legal international identity of said state across a whole range of competences (acquis) to the EU in order to eventually make the EU ‘Europe’s’ sole ‘sovereign’ legal international entity. Thus, whilst international treaties constrain the sovereignty of the state in the name of mutual benefit, EU treaties destroy the state and in so doing seeks to create a new and alternative form of government.

The reason that sovereign Norway bemoans its lack of influence over the EU is the same reason Norway has always bemoaned its lack of influence over the rest of Europe. With the possible exception of the Viking period Norway is simply too small and thus too lacking in power to exert much influence – period. Britain is not Norway and its relative power would afford a sovereign Britain far more influence over the rest of Europe – EU or no EU – than Norway precisely because Britain is a powerful state. Chancellor Merkel acknowledged as much last week when she said that it was far too early to write the British off because Britain remains a “formidable” economic and military power.             

   

At the end of the parrot sketch when farce has finally turned into complete absurdity Cleese says, “I’m not prepared to pursue my line of inquiry any longer as I think this is getting too silly”. The same could be said for Britain’s dead parrot Brexit debate.

Julian Lindley-French 

Speaking Big Truth unto Big Power

Riga, Latvia. 29 September. It is a curious phrase to speak truth unto power. It is believed to have originated in the US in the 1950s when a group of pacifist Quakers wrote a book seeking an alternative to the Cold War. It has also become a virtual motto for the British Civil Service. Now, regular readers of this blog will know that I am no pacifist, but I am utterly committed to the maintenance of a just peace and as committed to the defence of freedom. The purpose of this blog is not to frustrate establishments or annoy elites (although the latter has an allure). States need effective elites and establishments. My purpose is to help make them better and to remind them that in democracies they are accountable to me the citizen.  

Back here in Riga I am at the sharp-end of democracy, a place where the benefits and dangers of big power are very clear. For Latvians the rise again of its noisy neighbour and the illiberal ‘big’ military power it eschews raises big questions about whether the liberal states of the West are any longer capable of generating the necessary countervailing big military power needed to defend Latvian freedom. However, the need for such big power also raises a fundamental question that is at the heart of Europe’s, and indeed America’s political malaise; big power is necessarily distant power and distant power can be inherently anti-democratic. 

This paradox was brought home to me on the plane over here last night. For much of the journey I read pro-EU Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and his new book “The Euro”. It is a masterpiece and I will devote another coming blog to the many lessons Stiglitz has for Europe’s failed elite from the failed single currency. However, what struck me reading Stiglitz is the extent to which in the absence of proper democratic oversight far from becoming more efficient Europe’s distant elites became progressively and dangerously inefficient. For Stiglitz the Euro disaster was caused by an ideologically-driven elite whose fervour for ever more ‘Europe’ led to them dismissing the political and economic fundamentals needed to make function a single currency across of continent of widely differing polities, economies, languages and cultures.

Tonight I will have the honour of addressing His Excellency the State President of Latvia Raimonds Vejonis, together with an audience of assembled dignitaries on the defence of the Alliance.  My message will be blunt (as it often is); in spite of the many other pressures on Western democracies the first duty of the state to its people is their security and defence. That means a Europe that once again begins to understand the first principles of big defence power, how to afford it and apply it.  

And yet the defence of the Alliance is being undermined by dangerous disillusionment in publics across Europe and the wider West. This is partly the inevitable consequence of eight years of austerity (see Stiglitz) following the 2008 banking crash that was caused by yet another unaccountable big power elite. It is also partly the result of a failed ‘ideological’ Brussels elite (again see Stiglitz), and partly because the drift towards mega power, as expressed through mega trade deals such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, has inexorably fuelled a popular sense that power is inexorably moving away from the people leaving democracy a fallen, rotting husk on the autumn lawn of power. Brexit was certainly driven in part by this unease and the historical English distrust of unaccountable, distant power.

Free from any real accountability some ‘democratic’ elites have begun to do the same thing to their people as illiberal states routinely do to theirs; treat them like children because they the elites ‘know best.  Worse, bereft of influence or power organised legitimate dissent has drifted away from the chambers of representative democracy towards the new, extreme, and often illegitimate anarchism of social media. A drift that has further weakened the bond between leaders and led in democracies and too often enabled the likes of President Putin to insert an alternative ‘truth (MH17), and to further undermine the social and political cohesion vital to the defence of freedom. 

But here’s the ultimate paradox; in the world of the twenty-first century big power IS necessary. Indeed, the very freedom of the individual to express dissent about big power is dependent on effective big power. What is needed is for her/him to again feel a connection with it. If the West’s political elites are to re-capture the trust of the people which in a true democracy is the real foundation for the defence of freedom then they must begin to treat their fellow citizens like grown-ups and speak truth unto people. If not ‘populists’ and Putins will continue to fill the vacuum of mistrust with their own very trumped-up truths, and the West will continue its downward plunge into decline and division.

Therefore, what is desperately needed is for Western elites to again conceive of big power differently to illiberal big power. That means re-embracing democracy rather than treat it the same way large companies treat tax; something to be circumvented, and if possible avoided. In this dangerous age big power must speak big truth unto its big people, but it must also learn to listen and mean it.

Julian Lindley-French                 

Defence Brexit: Anglosphere and Eurosphere

“Where do we stand? We are not members of the European Defence Community, nor do we intend to be merged in a federal European system. We feel we have a special relationship to both…we are with them, but not of them”.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill, 11 May 1953.

 

Alphen, Netherlands. 26 September. The defence implications of Brexit are enormous. It is now three months since the Brexit referendum which saw the British people vote 52% to 48% to quit the EU. Since then, and in the absence of firm leadership in London, a phoney war is being ‘fought’ into which all sorts of nonsense is being injected. However, the defence aspect of Brexit has been by and large AWOL, both in Britain and elsewhere in Europe. Speaking in Riga, Latvia last week the need for Europe’s strongest military democracy to remain fully committed to the defence of Europe is as clear to me as ever. That commitment is in danger and here is why.

Nasty Brexit: Last week Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico warned that the, “V4 (Visegrad) countries will be uncompromising. Unless we feel a guarantee that these people [V4 citizens in the UK] are equal, we will veto any deal between the EU and Britain”. Whatever emollient British politicians and diplomats might say if the V4 states (or others) did indeed veto a Brexit deal the commitment of British public opinion to the defence of other European states would be dangerously undermined. Mr Fico cannot expect to threaten Britain and still expect British soldiers to possibly lay down their lives in defence of Slovakia and others. A nasty Brexit would thus not only damage the EU, but also NATO, an outcome that must be avoided at all costs. Remember, I called Brexit right!

Disarming Corbyn: The re-election on Saturday of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader threatens to critically undermine Britain’s military power. The leader of the main political opposition party is not only committed to unilateral nuclear disarmament, he is also a committed pacifist. This weekend Corbyn said as prime minister he would want to re-direct Britain’s armed forces towards ‘emergency support’. In other words, if Corbyn ever gained power in London he would turn the British armed forces into little more than a poorly-armed first aid force. An anti-NATO, anti-American Prime Minister Corbyn would thus put the entire Western defence architecture at risk at what is a dangerous time. There must be no complacency about the threat Corbyn poses to European defence.

Rearming Barrons: Last week the leaked ‘haul down’ report of recently-retired General Sir Richard Barrons warned that Britain’s armed forces have become a ‘shop window’ force due to repeated ‘skimming’ of the defence budget by Government. They look good but there is little of substance beyond the image. He argued (and rightly) for the need to reinforce the front-line with all the necessary support elements needed to ensure and enhance the ability of the force to project power projection, strike, and command coalitions and thus fulfil the roles and tasks assigned to it. Europe’s future defence will be dependent to a significant extent on just such a British military capability.

Anglosphere: If the Corbyn disaster can be averted post-Brexit Britain will inevitably form part of the American-centric defence Anglosphere (Yanksphere?), itself at the hub of the coalescing World-Wide West. For Britain the move towards Anglosphere is obvious. With the commissioning of the two new super-carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, the British will find themselves integrated ever more deeply into the global power projection order of strategy of an over-stretched US.

 

Eurosphere: The rest of Europe will have to move towards some form of defence Eurosphere via tighter European defence integration. Indeed, as efforts to save the Euro intensify the only way for the Eurozone states to make the single currency work AND afford credible security and defence will be to radically re-order their defence effort and integrate more tightly. Such integration would not, at least in the first instance, lead to the creation of a European Army, but rather a very tight intergovernmental structure favoured by EU foreign and security policy supreme Federica Mogherini in the EU’s recent Global Strategy.

Implications for post-Brexit NATO: The Alliance would continue to be organised around an American-led pillar and a European pillar. However, the US and Canada would be joined by the post-Brexit British, and by extension non-NATO strategic partners such as Australia, and possibly even India and Japan. The Eurosphere would in time begin to take on the appearance of an EU-centric European pillar of the Alliance. This is what perhaps Jean-Clause Juncker was implying in his State of the European Union speech this month when he called for NATO-friendly defence integration.

Implications for the Defence of Europe: Brexit will thus lead to a new organising principle for the defence of Europe with profound implications for several European states. France will be finally forced to demonstrate just how much ‘Europe’ she is really willing to accept in defence. The Nordic states will have to balance their traditional closeness to Britain with their commitment to EU defence, as will the Netherlands. And Germany will be forced to assume the mantle of European defence leadership that for understandable reasons is still politically sensitive if not toxic in many quarters of the Federal Republic. Italy?

Respectful Brexit: Britain’s REAL commitment to the defence of Europe, the use of Britain’s armed forces as an agent of influence not simply a function of defence, the cohesion of an Alliance organised along new lines, and the commitment of the British people to the defence of eastern and southern Europe, are all dependent to a significant extent on a respectful Brexit. 

Therefore, if there is a respectful and reasonable fulfilment of the democratic desire of the British people to leave the EU, allied to a clear British commitment to remain close friends and partners of the EU and its member-states, then security and defence Brexit could even help reinvigorate the security and defence of Europe. If not, then the deep divisions that ensue will in turn ensure that no-one in democratic European ‘wins’ and everyone is less secure.

Brexit will mark the final and irrevocable end of Britain’s dalliance with European defence integration, just as it will inevitably mark the start of a new era of European defence integration. It is time to plan accordingly to ensure the Western Alliance is organised for optimal effect in the Europe of tomorrow, not the Europe of yesterday.

Britain must be with ‘Europe‘, even if it is no longer of it.

Julian Lindley-French         

Putin: The Illusion of Power

“I have conquered an empire; but I have yet to conquer myself”

Peter the Great

Riga. Latvia. 22 September. The news that United Russia, the party President Putin backs won 54.2% of the vote in last week’s elections for the Duma, Russia’s parliament, hardly came as a great political surprise. United Russia now holds 343 of the 450 seats in the Duma, with the nearest rivals having gained only 13% of the vote, whilst the ‘liberal’ failed to surpass the 5% threshold and lost their last remaining seats. President Putin really has kicked the 1990s into the long, long grass of Russian history. President Putin also rules (or is that reigns) supreme and is thus free to further cultivate the Russian strongman image he has carefully crafted both at home and abroad. It is an illusion, but seen here from Latvia it is an exceptionally dangerous illusion.

In reality Russia is growing relatively weaker than most of its European and Western partner-adversaries in every area that matters, save armed force. The facts speak for themselves. According to the UN in 2016 Russia has an economy worth some $1.8 trillion, which is about the same size of that of Canada, and slightly bigger than that of Australia. This compares with a US economy worth $17.3 trillion, a German economy worth $3.7 trillion, and a British economy worth $3 trillion. And yet, SIPRI suggests that whilst the US in 2015 spent 3.3% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on defence or $597 billion and the UK spent 2% or $55.5 billion, Russia spent $66.4 billion or 5.4% of its GDP on defence. In fact, the true ‘burden’ of the Russian security state on the Russian economy is closer to, if not more than, 10% of GDP.

Why is Putin committing so much Russian taxpayer’s money to defence and other ‘security-related’ expenditure? For many Russians ‘strength and greatness’ means a strongman leader backed up by armed forces geared for aggression. For them history has taught that forcing supplicant respect from neighbouring others is the only way Russia can be secure. Consequently, Russia is an aggressive isolationist power that sees itself and sets itself apart from contemporary European/Western ideas of mutual interdependence. It is a profoundly Russian sense of isolationism twinned with exceptionalism that runs deep in the Russian soul, reinforced by President Putin’ belief that the disastrous Yeltsin years simply confirmed that closeness to the West simply makes it easier and cheaper for the perfidious West to confound Russia.

However, there are other factors driving President Putin’s over-mighty security state, not least the sheer size of Russia. President Putin is determined to instil centralising political discipline on regional governors and oligarchs in an enormous country that covers 13 time zones, suffers from poor infrastructure, and in which Vladivostok is roughly the same distance from Moscow as London is distant from Chicago. In a conversation I had with Mikhail Khodorkovsky a couple of years back I was struck by the extent to which even the illusion of threat instils a fierce loyalty to Mother Russia.

If there is an illusion of threat, there is also an illusion of power. Russia has simply been unable to come to terms with the twenty-first century and instead reached for those two great comforting balms beloved of many Russians; nostalgia and illusion. President Putin appeals to a sense of false nostalgia that afflicts many Russians outside relatively more liberal Moscow and St Petersburg. An idea that somehow the Soviet Union was the ‘good old days’ when Russia had the respect of the world, even its Western enemies. It is an illusion that President Putin is brilliantly (for the moment) and ruthlessly fostering. It is also why Moscow engages in lethal strategic grandstanding in Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere, even if contemporary Russia simply lacks the power fundamentals to be a true twenty-first century Great Power over the medium to longer-term.   

This illusion of power runs right through the Kremlin. In a recent interview with the BBC Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich warned that Brexit would weaken Europe and that no individual European state could anymore influence world affairs alone. Russia? For example, Britain is an intrinsically stronger power than Russia so why does Moscow think weaker Russia can influence world affairs when stronger Britain cannot? President Putin believes Russia is at its ‘strongest’ outside a rules-based world order and that Moscow’s very unpredictability is Moscow’s strength.

Whilst I am a fierce critic of President Putin I have a genuine respect for the man. Indeed, I find it nauseating when European political leaders express shock at his actions. He is not, and has never claimed to be, a woolly European liberal democrat. He is a Russian nationalist who will act in what he sees as the Russian national interest whatever that takes and we in the West had better come to terms with that. His world-view is the product of Russia’s war-winning, land-grabbing sacrifice in World War Two which fashioned a love of country from the dark, dark crucible of destruction. In other words, President Putin believes he IS Russia and that is all the political legitimacy he needs. He is not alone in this belief. For several years I educated Russian officers and diplomats at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy and I never ceased to be impressed by their love of country, their profound belief in Mother Russia, and their determination to defend her.

The Russians have a saying, “umom Rosiya neponjat” or one can never understand Russia.  For the sake of friends and allies such as Latvia the West must stop trying to look at President Putin through ‘why can’t he be likes us’ Western eyes and quickly. The very disconnect between Russia’s weak power fundamentals and Russia’s vaunting power ambition that is driving Russian policy means Russia’s power illusion is as much a danger to itself as to its neighbouring others. Unless President Putin changes course Russia will again sink under the burden over its own over-securitized insecurity. The reckoning may take a little longer to arrive than some Western commentators believe because Russians are willing to sacrifice longer for what they believe to be Russian ‘greatness’ than most ‘soft’ Westerners. However, catastrophe will come.

President Putin is hoping that by then he will have re-established Russian influence over its near-abroad to such an extent that his place in Russian history will be assured, and that whatever test Russia must ultimately face durable Russians will outlast weak Westerners. In preparing the ground for this great ‘test’ of strength President Putin sees himself as the natural heir of Peter the Great. However, President Putin should remember that the use of the suffix ‘Great’ was not simply because Tsar Peter understood power. He also understood that to make Russia a real eighteenth century Great Power he had to transform Russia from a fifteenth century state. 

If President Putin is to make Russia a real twenty-first century Great Power then he will have to transform Russia from a twentieth century state. At present there is no sign he understands that precisely because he has failed to reform, which is precisely because he has failed to conquer himself and his many prejudices about Russia and the ‘other’. Yes, much of President Putin’s power is but an illusion, but when viewed from here in Latvia it is a very real and a very dangerous illusion.

Julian Lindley-French     

         

The Barrons Revolt: Why Big Wars Start

Alphen, Netherlands. 19 September. Big wars involving democracies usually start for three reasons; disarmament, distraction, and denial. The West today suffers from all three afflictions. The leaking of the so-called ‘haul down’ report of General Sir Richard Barrons, the former commander of Britain’s Joint Force Command, is simply the latest warning from a senior commander. Some years ago I worked briefly with Barrons. I have rarely met a more thinking or erudite officer.

In an interview with The Times of today Barrons warns that Britain and NATO have no effective plan for defending Europe from a Russian attack because of splits within the Alliance. Russia, he says, could deploy tens of thousands of troops into NATO territory within 48 hours whilst it would take months for the Alliance to do the same thing. The result; “…some land and control of airspace and territorial waters could be lost before NATO 28 member states had even agreed to respond”.

Disarmament: The July NATO Warsaw Summit Declaration states; “Since Wales we have turned a corner. Collectively, Allies’ defence expenditures have increased for the first time since 2009. In just two years, a majority of Allies have halted or reversed declines in defence spending in real terms”. This statement might be right in fact, but it is complete nonsense in reality. It is not absolute power that is critical in any given military balance of power, but relative power. In relative terms too many NATO nations continue to disarm relatively to Russia, which is still busting its economy to rearm. Indeed, what really worries me is the combination of a weak Russian economy crippled further by massive defence investments by an autocratic regime that seems to claim political legitimacy from what is a policy that can only end in disaster.

Distraction:  Reading the outputs from last week’s EU informal Bratislava summit I became very concerned. Apparently. Britain is now the enemy of the EU and many of its member-states. And yet, many of those same EU (and NATO) states routinely expect British soldiers to lay down their lives in their defence. Let me be clear; if in the Brexit negotiations the EU and its members attempt to punish the British people for an act of democracy it will weaken the commitment of Europe’s strongest democratic military power to the defence of Europe. Cut the stupidity, and stop turning Brexit into what is an almighty strategic distraction.  Fight Britain, Europe loses.

Denial: In a recent exchange with the former Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski I challenged Poles to confront the myth that Britain and France betrayed Poland in September 1939. Incompetence yes, betrayal no. The fact that both countries declared war on Nazi Germany on 3 September and fought a world war that ended them as world powers was proof that London and Paris were willing to honour their commitment to Poland. Moreover, I argued, if one looked at the deployment of German forces on 1 September, 1939 there was precious little else Britain and France could have done. The Wehrmacht may have had some sixty divisions on the Polish border before the invasion, but it had forty-six divisions on their western border reinforced by the Westwall (or Siegfried line) at its very strongest.

However, the Poles also have a point. Britain and France did not simply offer ‘commitments’, they offered solemn treaty guarantees for Poland’s defence before the conflict, and ‘guarantees’ of action once the war began. Neither happened. Worse, the real power in the West at the time, the United States, had retreated into isolationism. The result was that when the unthinkable happened the Western democracies were forced to trade the space of their allies for the time to ultimately defeat the enemy.

Which brings me to a fourth ‘D’; deterrence. Barrons is making essentially the same point that was made recently by NATO’s former No.2 soldier General Sir Richard Shirreff in his excellent book 2017: The Coming War with Russia.   Now, I am not equating Putin’s Russia with Nazi Germany because I have too much respect for Russians and their sacrifice in World War Two to do that. However, the warning from Barrons, Shirreff, me and others is clear; when faced with aggressive, unpredictable, nationalist, autocratic regimes that seek a critical military advantage at a place and time of their choosing one has no choice but to prepare for the worst. In other words, wishful thinking does not make for sound deterrence.

      

NATO's Warsaw plan is to base 1000 troops in each of the three Baltic States. Barrons says this of the plan; “There is no force behind it, or plans or resilience…It is an indication of how, at this stage in our history, I think many people have lost sight of what a credible military force is and requires. They think a little bit of posing or a light force constitutes enough and it isn’t”. So, just how many troops does Russia have right at this moment in the Western military oblast directly adjacent to the Baltic States? Four corps or 120,000 troops.

As an Oxford historian who has studied and written at length about the causes of both World War One and World War Two I have been, and I am, increasingly worried that an unstable Russia could at some point be unable to resist the opportunity to exploit an overwhelming local advantage to take Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and present the West with a nuclear-backed fait accompli. Many of you out there will think that is unthinkable. You are in denial. It really is now thinkable. My mission, and that of Sir Richard, is to ensure that never happens.

World War Two happened because of Adolf Hitler. However, it also happened because like so many of the leaders of today’s Western democracies Britain and France were for too long in denial about the extent and the scope of the threats to the borders of democratic Europe. What to do about it? Political leaders must finally face hard reality and begin the complete and proper overhaul of NATO defence and deterrence so that defensive forces properly deter offensive forces. This means going far beyond the Warsaw window-dressing where getting the language agreed for the Declaration was more important than defending Europe.  Nothing less than the strategic renovation of the Alliance is needed. To that end, I will co-lead a major project in the coming months with retired US General John Allen. Will the politicians listen? They should because if they don’t THEN history really might be revisited…and on their watch.

Julian Lindley-French

Tank!

“Victory in this war will belong to the belligerent who is the first to put a cannon on a vehicle capable of moving on all kinds of terrain”.

Colonel Jean-Baptiste Estienne, 24 August, 1914

Alphen, Netherlands. 15 September. At 0515 hours on the morning of 15 September, 1916 at Flens Courcelette in the Somme battlefield the air was rent by a sound new to the battlefield. The engines of 32, 29 ton British Mark I tanks of the Guards Division powered up to a crescendo before beginning their lumbering 3mph/4kph advance towards the German trenches. Seven tanks immediately broke down. The sight of 25 of these ‘monsters’ suddenly appearing out of the early autumn fog in which the Somme valley was swathed led some German troops to panic. However, as one would expect of the German Army, most did not. Although the British tanks, supported haphazardly by infantry, made some limited, initial gains once the shock had worn off the inevitable German counter-attacks negated much of the early advance.

Equally, for all that the attack failed to make the hoped for break-through this day a century ago marks the beginning of a new phase in manoeuvre warfare and the search for the right mix of speed, armour, firepower and effective strategic and tactical application of the tank that continues to this day. Indeed, even a quick glance would confirm the link between the caterpillar-tracked Mark I tank of 1916, and the advanced main battle tank of today.

One irony of the first British tanks was that they had been inspired by naval thinking of the time. First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill was behind the idea of a ‘landship’, and even to this day ‘tankers’ use nautical terms such as ‘turret’ and ‘hatch’ etc. Indeed, the only reason they are called 'tanks' is that to mask their true purpose the workers at the agricultural machinery manufacturers in Lincoln where the Mark I was being developed were told they were ‘water tanks’ destined for Mesopotamia.

The problem with the Mark I was reliability. It had been originally intended that 59 tanks would take part in operations on 15 September, but 27 of the tanks were non-operational. This was mainly due to problems with their experimental 105 bhp Foster-Daimler-Knight engines. Of the 25 tanks which made it into action they were divided into ‘male’ tanks, armed with two quick-firing 6 pound Hotchkiss cannons, and ‘female’ tanks armed with four Vickers .303 calibre machine guns.

Although the first use of tanks in action by the British undoubtedly came as a complete surprise to the Germans several countries were developing similar systems at the time. Indeed, perhaps the first real tank was developed not by the British but by Austria-Hungary, although Vienna’s ‘tank’ never made it beyond the prototype stage.

It was not until April 1918 that the first tank-on-tank battle took place at the Second Battle of Villiers-Bretonneux when three British Mark V tanks encountered three enormous German A7V tanks, each with a crew of 30. In what proved to be perhaps the slowest battle in modern military history it was eventually the solitary British ‘male’ tank which successfully struck its German enemy and forced the A7Vs to withdraw.

However, it was dawn on 8 August, 1918 at the Battle of Amiens that the tank began to be used to real effect. One of the most innovative of British commanders General Sir Henry Rawlinson had commanded Fourth Army at the Somme and had seen the potential of the tank. On what German commander General Erich Ludendorff called ‘the black day of the German Army” Rawlinson for the first time used air power, infantry and massed tanks in close order to punch a hole through the defences of over-extended German forces. What followed thereafter was a fighting German retreat that would continue to the Armistice in November 1918. The tank had come of age.

It was German commanders such as Guderian and Rommel, and Russian thinkers such as Tukhachevsky, who saw the real potential of the tank during the interbellum and properly exploited Rawlinson’s August 1918 lessons. The result was the Blitzkrieg tactics unleashed by Nazi Germany on Poland in 1939, France and the Low Countries in 1940, and on the Soviet Union in 1941. In the inter-war years the British once again retreated behind the wall of the Royal Navy, whilst the French went down the tactical dead-end of that ultimate World War One trench, the Maginot Line. The idea of static defence-in-depth had by and large been abandoned by the Germans as a concept of warfare as early as 1918 with the destruction of the Hindenburg Line.

       

Perhaps it is best to leave the last word on the tank action at Flers Courcelette to Winston Churchill. “My poor ‘land battleships’ have been let off prematurely on a petty scale…This priceless conception, containing, if used in its integrity and on a sufficient scale, the certainty of a great and brilliant victory, was revealed to the Germans for the mere purpose of taking a few ruined villages”.

Julian Lindley-French