The EU Migrant Ferry Service

Alphen, Netherlands, 31 August. The website of the EU External Action Service states that the “mission core mandate” of the EUNAVFOR MED Operation Sophia “…is to undertake systematic efforts to identify, capture and dispose of vessels and enabling assets used or suspected of being used by migrant smugglers or traffickers, in order to disrupt the business model of human smuggling and trafficking networks in the Southern Central Mediterranean and prevent further loss of life at sea”.  In the past twenty-four hours European naval forces, together with up to forty other agencies, have rescued close to 10,000 migrants, many from sub-Saharan Africa.  Most have been picked up only 12 miles/20 kilometres off the Libyan coast as the traffickers are now putting just enough fuel in their horribly overloaded boats to get them outside Libyan territorial waters.

It is of course vital all such souls are rescued. No-one should have to endure a slow, lonely, drowning death in the middle of an alien sea and some 3000 people have already died in the attempt. Nor should Europe try to erect a Trump-like and frankly unworkable wall to keep migrants out. Equally, the strategic implications for European society of this seemingly endless flow of human misery must be gripped, reduced and its effects understood and mitigated.

Let me deal with the strategic implications for European society first because that is what this blog does, however uncomfortable. Those picked up off Libya are but the latest of 110,500 migrants who have crossed the Mediterranean Sea between Libya and Italy this year. Most of them are decent people who arrive in hope. When they arrive in Italy will be given a medical check-up, registered, and then sent to a migration centre where the process of seeking asylum begin. However, most migrants do not want to stay in Italy, and in any case the process is so lengthy many lose patience. They then drift northwards or sink into enforced Mafia-manipulated petty criminality on the streets of Rome and other Italian cities. Others get trapped on the Italian border with Austria, France and Switzerland, whilst many eventually make it through with the help of local traffickers. They then head further northwards towards Germany, the Netherlands and other Western European countries, whilst others end up in ‘The Jungle’ trying to reach Britain.

The essential problems are of scale and pace. Take those 110,500 who have made it to Europe this year. By year’s end that means at least 150,000 migrants will have reached Europe. Add this to the 1.1 million who went to Germany last year, together with those entering Europe via other routes, some 2 million people will have entered the EU illegally in the past two years. At least 80% will remain in Europe either legally or illegally, which means some 1.8 million people.

Experience suggests that over time there will be political amnesties and almost all will be granted the right to remain as European politicians buckle under the weight of human rights legislation and ‘community’ appointed human rights lawyers. The migrants will then be allowed to bring their families over, which means the European population will grow by at least 8 million over the coming years simply as a result of two years ‘business’ by traffickers. Given Turkey could well break the deal agreed last March with the EU that figure could climb rapidly.

Now, look forward twenty years. Experience of mass imposed immigration does not suggest the creation of harmonious multicultural societies. Trevor Phillips, former head of the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission, even went as far this year to suggest that ‘multiculturalism’ has failed. Rather, recipient societies become progressively destabilised as migrant ghettoes form often with people who hold very different values to liberal Europeans. This destabilisation is made worse by the fact that the migration is so concentrated with most migrants wanting only to go to some six Western European countries. These are societies already grappling with the threat posed by ISIS as Chancellor Merkel admitted last month when she said that ISIS fighters had entered Europe in the migration flow.

So, can the humanity and security square be circled? Most reasonable Europeans understand that migration cannot be completely stopped and that what Europe is witnessing is an historic, structural shift in migration. However, Europeans do expect their leaders to better manage the crisis, which they are not. Better ‘management’ would need leaders to recognise first and foremost that the threat to European society from such uncontrolled immigration is as great as that posed by ISIS, not least because it is part and parcel of the same threat. Unfortunately, not only is there a complete absence of any attempt to ‘manage’ the crisis, Europe’s leaders would prefer Europeans pretend it was not happening, even if the implications for Europe’s future are grave. It is in the political vacuum in between which Trump-like populists exploit.

Europe’s leaders must thus come together and craft the following agenda for systematic action: establish a Europe-wide refugee policy (not a ‘common’ policy) that sees genuine asylum seekers assessed quickly and distributed across the entire EU; open new routes for legal, managed migration to Europe; deport humanely those that do not qualify to remain, the message of returnees will act as a powerful deterrent to those thinking of making a perilous journey; used language and dialect experts to identify the home country of those who have deliberately ‘lost’ identity papers; massively increase aid and development to those countries which are the main source of economic migrants, and include education programmes and media campaigns about the perils of making such a journey; do far more to integrate those migrants that remain into European society so they begin to feel part of it; face down the racists and their nostalgia-fuelled appeals to an ideal Europe that never existed; and, above all, go after the traffickers wherever they are with whatever it takes. These criminals are a clear and present danger to Europe’s security.

The other day, in yet another example of crass political naiveté, Chancellor Merkel pleaded with Turks not to import their current rivalries into Germany. Sorry, but that is precisely what happens when huge numbers of immigrants enter a liberal society. There is every reason to believe that ten years hence if the current migration flows continue at the current pace and scale Europe will look ever more like the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa complete with all the same tensions and hatreds. Plus, of course, the anger that will be felt by many Europeans as they wonder how on earth their leaders allowed things to get so bad.

Operation Sophia is yet another example of all that is wrong with Europe’s pitiful attempts to deal with big, dangerous, strategic change. Whether it be the ongoing Euro crisis, the threats posed by Russia and ISIS, or society-bending hyper-migration they all require grand strategy – the organisation of massive means in pursuit of grand strategic ends over time and distance. The failure to generate such strategy has already led the British to quit the EU (immigration was the main driver), the effective failure of the border-free Schengen Zone, and a profound loss of faith in Europe’s by and large incompetent and spineless leaders.    

Sadly, far from disrupting the ‘business model’ of traffickers or protecting the external borders of the EU, EUNAVFOR MED Operation Sophia aids and abets criminals, and as such is little more than a migrant ferry service between Libya and Italy.

Julian Lindley-French          

European Defence: The In-Betweeners

Alphen, Netherlands. 25 August. Calls for a European Army are a bit like my school bus of old; it could normally and tediously be relied upon to turn up regularly, but never went anywhere interesting. Indeed, ever since I wrote my doctorate on the subject many years ago Groundhog Day calls for the creation of a ‘common’ European force have surfaced and re-surfaced every time pressure mounts for Europe to do more to defend itself. The problem is that no ‘common’ as opposed to a ‘collective’ force can exist without a European government, and unless the French have suddenly become fans of scrapping France in favour of ‘Europe’ that ain’t going to happen anytime soon. The latest calls emerged this week and, as is now traditional for Europe’s leaders, Brexit is to blame. I never cease to be amazed at the power of we British to be responsible for all of the EU’s woes these days, from the anaemic, for that read no economic growth in the Eurozone, to failure to develop a common asylum policy, to Europe’s inability to defend itself. Fool Britannia!

This week’s Franco-German-Italian meeting demonstrated all too clearly just how far Europeans are from creating a European government AND thus a European Army. Prime Minister Renzi wanted more ‘security’ i.e. help with the refugees flooding into Italy, but as a friend of Russia seemed little interested in defence. President Hollande, like all French presidents when in trouble, called for more Europe’ to ward off Eurosceptic challenges to his political left and right, but not too much more ‘Europe’. Like all French presidents of the Fifth Republic Hollande does not actually want more Europe if it means less France. Chancellor Merkel benignly (and it is benign folks) and deliberately confuses more ‘Europe’ with more ‘Germany’ as she desperately seeks to use the EU to separate much-needed German leadership from not-much-needed German history. The one thing that they could all agree upon is that we British are appalling.

Indeed, it was interesting to watch the body language of the three of them on the Italian aircraft-carrier Garibaldi, soon to be massively and mightily eclipsed by the first of the new ‘ours are far bigger than yours’ British Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft-carriers. This was the theatre of togetherness replete, complete and ‘deplete’ with symbolic adherence to the federalist thinking of Rossi and Spinelli and the 1941 manifesto for the creation of a federal European state in which none of them actually believes. Only Jean-Claude Juncker believes in such nonsense, as his comment this week about borders being the worst political invention ever attests. I assume Juncker means borders within Europe?

However, it is European defence again where all this ‘faux-Europe’ nonsense is really being played out. This week Bohuslav Sobotka, prime minister of the essentially Eurosceptic Czech Republic, called for the idea of a ‘common’ European Army to be put on the agenda of October’s post-Brexit EU summit, because unlike Renzi he really is worried about Russia. Put aside for the moment Sobotka’s now common confusion between a ‘common’ force and a ‘collective’ force. In a speech he also called for a ‘joint’ European force, which is different from a common and to some extent a collective force a la NATO. His argument appears to be that such are the security and defence challenges faced by Europeans be it from mass uncontrolled immigration, Russia or a combination of the two only a European ‘force’ could possibly help control unwanted movement within the EU, and even more unwanted movement into the EU.

Add ‘President Trump’ to that mix. Whether it be President Clinton or President Trump, but especially if it is President Trump, the days of Europeans free-riding on the Americans for their security and defence are soon to be over. Add to that equation the coming loss of Europe’s strongest military power from the EU’s Common (there they go again) Security and Defence Policy and a form of mild panic is setting in in some quarters.

The problem is that the EU can be either vaguely solvent or vaguely defended, but it cannot be vaguely both. The EU’s monetary and budgetary stability rules prevent the realisation of NATO’s Defence Investment Pledge. As I wrote in my big paper for the NATO Warsaw Summit “NATO: The Enduring Alliance: 2016” “Given that 18 EU member-states are…far beyond the 3% budget deficit to GDP ratio enshrined in EU law…if the next US administration demands that NATO Allies move towards the 2%/20% goals far more quickly than the ‘within a decade’ specified in the Wales Summit Declaration…NATO and EU members will likely find themselves trapped in a kind of political no-man’s land between German-demanded austerity, EU deficit to GDP laws, and American-driven demands for all NATO members to spend 2% GDP on defence”.

In reality, calls for a European Army are not driven by the strategic imperative to increase Europe’s military capability in the face of threats. Rather, they are a desperate attempt to find a way to increase defence investment without actually spending more money and thus breaking (again) EU rules. The idea is by ‘eradicating’ duplications and the inherent inefficiency of having 28, soon-to-be 27, separate national European military establishments money could be found at the cost of sovereignty.  All well and good on paper, but does not work in the current reality is unlikely to work in future reality.

European defence is lost in-between Europe’s in-betweeners: between the EU and the member-states; between ‘common’ and ‘collective’; between strategy and politics; between the EU and NATO; between capability and capacity; between soft and hard power; between deficit, debt and defence; between the strictures of the European currency and the needs of European defence; and between Europe’s past,  present, and politically-uncertain future.

At one level Merkel, Hollande and Renzi are right to recall Rossi and Spinelli; the EU cannot stay where it is right now and continue to function – it must either integrate more deeply or disintegrate ever so gently. And, it may be that once we pesky Brits are no longer sitting at the table in Brussels telling the rest of the EU a ‘common’ defence simply will not work without a European government, at least in President Putin’s lifetime, then Europeans will decide in time to handover the whole Kitten Caboodle of Europe’s defence to the EU. However, until then the whole debate on a European Army will be trapped between strategic reality and political pretence, and Europe will remain trapped between ISIS, Russia and a possible President Trump, and will thus be far more insecure than needs be.

Of course, the alternative for Europe’s national leaders is right between their eyes; spend more bloody money now on defence! Now, where’s that bus.

Julian Lindley-French               

London, Rio & Brexit

Alphen, Netherlands. 22 August. Sixty-seven Olympic medals, of which twenty-seven are gold, with Great Britain second in the medals table ahead of China. Anyone who thinks sport and politics are somehow separate does not live on this planet. However, there is and must always be a distinction made between the two. Equally, I am not going for a moment to suggest that Team GB’s astonishing success at the Rio Olympics denotes some moral and political superiority of the British nation, not least because there is no such thing. It is precisely the making of such false connections, and the nationalism it engenders that leads illiberal powers such as Russia to engage in the state-sponsored doping of Olympic athletes. However, there are two sets of strategic lessons that I believe must be heeded from both the London and Rio Olympics. The first set concerns strategic lessons for the British government to learn about strategy and performance in the coming post-Brexit world. The second set concerns how Britain’s European partners deal with Britain in the coming Brexit negotiations.

First, the strategic lessons for Britain. The decision to improve Britain’s Olympic performance was utterly political. In 1996 at the Atlanta Olympics Britain finished thirty-second in the medals table with a paltry single gold medal. The nation of plucky losers had again pluckily lost. Enough was enough! When Tony Blair came to power in 1997 his attempt to recast Britain as ‘Cool Britannia’ (remember that?) led to some £300 million of mainly lottery money being invested in British elite athletes to improve Britain’s Olympic performance.

This strategy was bolstered in 2005 when London was awarded what was to become perhaps the most successful Olympics in the modern era. The London Olympic Park was delivered on time and to budget with a clear legacy plan enshrined at the core of a well-designed and well-implemented strategy. Although the aim to get more people engaged in sport has proven slightly more challenging, particularly for younger generations bought up on computer games that an oldie like me, brought up on the playing fields of sporting battle and Oxford, does not get.

There are six specific lessons for the British government. The first lesson is an old one. When in a political corner the British remain very good at fighting their way out of it. Second, given a good strategy and belief in an objective Britain is very good at delivering. Third, Britain succeeded at both the London and Rio Olympics by going out and hiring the best coaches irrespective of from where they came. Fourth, the elite performance programmes for British athletes were utterly ruthless funding only those people and sports who continually delivered. Fifth, Britain set out to achieve Olympic success for itself, not to diminish anybody else.  Sixth, Britain’s exit from the EU must be for Britain and not against ‘Europe’. Indeed, Brexit must not be about leaving the EU, but re-building Britain’s place in the world as a top five economy and military power (which Britain will need).

Second, the lessons for Britain’s European partners in managing divergence; if Brexit is FOR Britain, further European integration must be FOR ‘Europe’, and not AGAINST Britain. This morning Francois Hollande, Angela Merkel and Matteo Renzi will meet on the tiny Italian island of Ventotene. The symbolism could not be more pointed. As Britain basks in a patriotic, nation-affirming Olympic moment the leaders of what is soon to be the rump EU will endeavour to recapture the spirit of European integration the loss of which Brexit has highlighted. Divergence is inevitable but how that divergence is managed will shape the future of Europe.

In 1941, whilst imprisoned by Mussolini, Ernesto Rossi and Altieri Spinelli wrote “The Manifesto of Ventotene”, which called for the creation of a European federal state.  Today, the the three leaders will need to consider how to promote further integration without punishing the British for a democratic choice to reject it. It is a serious point because such is the extent of pan-European euro-scepticism that failure could see the entire current crop of European leaders swept aside weakening an already pitifully weak Europe at a dangerous strategic moment. The pressure to ‘punish’ Britain will be hard to resist. The greatest fear in Brussels is that the British actually make a success of Brexit.

Therefore, it is time for cool heads all round. Let Britain enjoy its moment of Olympic glory with the clear understanding all round it is sport, not some alternative metaphor for war. The three leaders on Ventotene could help set the tone for the forthcoming Brexit negotiations and political reconciliation by jointly congratulating Britain on its Olympic success, even if it is through gritted teeth.  In return Britain must re-commit itself to being a good partner. That means first and foremost an absolute British commitment to the security and defence of Europe in the twenty-first century.  

The alternative is one in which all Europeans lose. Before the great battles with France of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries English and Welsh longbowmen, armed with the decisive strategic weapon of the age, would stand before ranks of French knights holding up the two arrow-pulling forefingers of the left hand to demonstrate their defiance and their firepower. Even today ‘two fingers’ is a mark of English defiance and there will be part of the English character this morning that sees Olympic success as ‘two-fingers’ to those who say Britain cannot thrive outside of the EU. That sentiment must be resisted and its further stoking avoided – Britain is too important to Europe and Europe too important to Britain for a serious set of negotiations to be based on defiance…on either side.

So no, I am not going to make a spurious connection between British sporting excellence and national superiority, because there is none, except perhaps for a moment in the organisation of some Olympic sports (football?). However, I am going to enjoy a bloody good, momentary gloat!

By the way, was Australia at the Rio Olympics?

Julian Lindley-French

Time to Block Barrel Bomb Bashar

“We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is if we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilised. That would change my calculus. That would change my calculation”.

President Barack Obama, August 2012

Alphen, Netherlands. 17 August. To be effective statecraft must consider all options if strategy is to realise outcomes. Yesterday, at least nine civilians were killed in Aleppo, and others died on the outskirts of Damascus, as a result of the regime’s use of barrel bombs filled with life-crushing chemicals. Yesterday’s victims, alive when I had breakfast, now join the at least 300,000 who have perished in Syria’s ghastly war. Last week I argued in this blog that if the West is not prepared to do anything more than write hand-wringing op-eds in well-known newspapers then it must talk to Assad and his Russian backers. Indeed, for Assad and his backers are responsible for most of the killing in Syria. However, what would induce Assad and Putin to talk given they clearly believe they are winning and can act with impunity?

In fact Assad, Putin and their Iranian allies are not winning the Syrian war which is in stalemate. Even with limited Russian support the regime in Damascus is not strong enough to win. However, as long as Russia and Iran continue to back Bashar Assad he cannot lose. The stalemate is made worse by a weak and incompetent West. Like the Grand Old Duke of York of old in 2013 President Obama marched his troops and those of other Western powers up the hill of ill-considered action, only to promptly march them down again.  Today, Assad and Putin are betting the US will take no action beyond counter-ISIS missions before the November US presidential elections.

So, what did President Obama mean by ‘red lines’ back in 2012? The White House said that if the regime or others used chemical weapons against civilians the US would deem the regime to have crossed a red line. It is not too late even now to reinvest those ‘red lines’ with presidential political capital by warning Assad that the red-lines are still in place.  In other words, if the regime continues to use barrel bombs against Syria's civilian population filled with chlorine, napalm and other chemicals as part of a truly deadly fuel-air mix there will be consequences…and mean it.  

What could be the consequences? Between 1991 and 2003 America and Britain declared and enforced no fly zones over Iraq to protect the Kurdish and Shia Arab peoples in Iraq from the vengeful actions of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Baghdad. Over that period both the Americans and British undertook air and missile strikes against Iraqi military targets to deter, prevent and punish Saddam.

What would the no fly zones restrict? It is now time to establish no fly zones over all Syrian cities. To ensure proportionality the American-led coalition could first agree that current air operations over Syria against ISIS would be expanded to attacks on the slow-moving regime helicopters entering self-declared zones and which are responsible for carrying up to eight barrel bombs per mission. If that fails to deter the regime following due warning a complete no fly zone could then be established banning all aircraft from the zones.

How would the no fly zones be enforced? Given President Erdogan’s rapprochement with Moscow it is unlikely that he would permit the use of Turkey’s Incirlik air base to enforce the no fly zones. Therefore, RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus would need to be the hub for air operations, reinforced by the US Sixth Fleet and the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle. At present there is no US fleet carrier in the Mediterranean but operations could also be launched from the Gulf. The ability of the West to undertake such operations will be significantly enhanced over the next few years by the commissioning of the two large British aircraft carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales.       

Why would no fly zones force Assad to talk? First, it would flush the Russian role out into the open and force Moscow to make a choice. Last week Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov suggested Russia and the US were close to undertaking joint actions over Aleppo. If this is the case ‘joint actions’ could only take place if the Russian’s themselves stop applying the tactics of Grozny to Aleppo. Second, Western action would remind Assad just how fickle Russia’s support for him actually is. If Moscow was to be offered a deal that would preserve Russian influence in the region without Bashar Assad he would be dropped by Putin faster than an empty vodka bottle in a Russian government dacha. Third, commitment to no fly zones would at last communicate not only Western resolve, but a reasoned course of Western action. Faced with a West that is finally resolved to act Assad would talk and the stuttering Geneva talks might finally begin to make headway.

This week Assad flew several Mi-24 Hind helicopters right through President Obama’s red lines. It is time for the West to block barrel bomb Bashar and for President Obama to step up to his own lines.

Julian Lindley-French     

Decline and Fall 2016?

“In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security.  They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom.  When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.”

Edward Gibbon “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”

Alphen, Netherlands. 10 August. The West is in trouble. Whatever one might think about President Erdogan’s post-coup power grab he understands the ebb and flow of power. This week Erdogan went to St Petersburg to meet Russia’s President Putin less than a year after Turkish aircraft shot down a Russian plane. The implications of the trip are clear; given Turkey’s difficult geopolitical and geographic position Ankara’s best option is to back the ascendant power. Ever since Turkey joined NATO in 1952 Ankara has taken the view that alliance with the West affords Turkey the best chance of security. That assumption would appear to be changing.  Why?

There are many afflictions undermining the power and influence of the contemporary West. The very fact that an insurgent such as Donald Trump is so close to the White House is already profoundly shaking the confidence of America’s allies and partners in the value of US leadership. The obsession of European leaders with Project Europe at the expense of all else is doing real damage to the West’s strategic brand. It is now obvious that the EU far from aggregating European power on the world stage is accelerating the retreat of Europeans into an obsession with values and legalism. However, it is the focus of to many elites in the West on short-term political and/or financial gratification at the expense of long-term strategic probity that is doing the real damage.

Let me highlight the point by citing two examples of this problem over the past week or so from my own country Britain; the stalled deal with China to build a new nuclear power-station, and a leaked report on the relative capabilities of British and Russian armed forces.

Last week new British Prime Minister Theresa May ordered a review of a deal under which China would have funded the construction of an as yet untested French-designed nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in return for China being able to build another showcase reactor at Bradwell in Essex. This desperate deal was the brainchild of the strategically-illiterate Cameron-Osborne duopoly.

The fact that such a deal could have ever been contemplated reflects the political stupidity of what passes for British energy policy. When I was a kid I used to work in a pub at Oldbury-on-Severn right next to a nuclear power station at a time when Britain was the world leader in civil nuclear power. However, the ‘power’ of the green lobby, and the political obsession of several governments with renewables when it was clear such technologies could never meet Britain’s energy needs led Britain down an energy dead-end. It also highlighted the cost of the 'little politics at the expense of big strategy' problem that has dogged Britain for years.

As for China there is nothing in Beijing’s behaviour of late in the South and East China Seas or in the levels of Chinese state cyber-hacking or Chinese espionage that would suggest Beijing is ever going to be a real strategic partner of either Britain or the West. London must understand that Chinese state funding for such projects is only undertaken as part of what Beijing perceives as Chinese state, i.e. geopolitical interests. What are Chinese interests? To weaken Britain’s ability to act as an independent strategic actor by imposing a level of British dependence on China, and in particular to weaken London’s still vital strategic partnership with the United States.

Even on commercial grounds this deal is madness, on strategic grounds it is full on insanity.   To then compound the problem by giving an illiberal power such as China unheralded and utterly unwarranted access to key components of Britain’s critical nuclear energy infrastructure simply demonstrates the retreat from sound ‘strategy-fying’ which has afflicted London for far too long.

And then there is Russia. This morning a leaked report from the British Army’s Land Warfare Centre publicly confirmed something of which I have been aware of for some time – Russian forces could now out-think, out-manouevre, and out-fight British and all other European forces. General Sir Richard Shirreff, NATO’s former military No. 2, and for whom I had the honour of working briefly when he was commander of the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, is a friend and colleague. He was attacked by London’s chattering classes earlier this year for publishing a book entitled 2017: War with Russia.  His assailants had clearly not read the book.

What is really interesting was why Shirreff was attacked. The general thrust of the criticism seemed to be that Shirreff was a warmongering general who was bothering people with an uncomfortable reality and that he really did not understand that the idea of war has been banished because it is neither politically-correct nor politically-convenient. Indeed, the abuse, for that is what much if it was, was little more than strategic and political decadence from a political and intellectual class in London too many of whom seem unwilling or unable to comprehend that really, really bad things can still happen in world affairs. And, that it will fall to states like Britain to stop it and if it happens do something about it. Syria?

So, decline and fall? Not quite. The good news is that Prime Minister May seems to have adopted a far more sober view of British strategic interests than the strategically-illiterate Cameron and the mercantilist Osborne. The fact that the British Army is beginning to properly address the issue of relative power suggests strategic realism might be returning. And, Prime Minister May is surely right to review the Hinkley Point deal and hopefully kill it; the French reactor does not work, the Chinese must not be able to use energy as a geopolitical lever on Britain, and the British taxpayer is being screwed by both.

It is time the West got a strategic grip and that can only happen when leading powers like Britain start again to put strategy before politics. Then the likes of Turkey will again believe that their security can only be afforded by allying with the liberal powers against the illiberal powers for that is the choice all of us must now make.

As for Mr Trump???????????

Julian Lindley-French  

     

      

Syria is the new Chechnya

Alphen, Netherlands. 3 August. August always fills me with geopolitical foreboding. With the democracies on vacation it is this month that is traditionally the moment for dirty geopolitics. This August is doubly concerning because it coincides with the Brazil Olympics. True to form our old friend Vladimir Putin is using both to ruthlessly pursue his strategic ends in Syria. Remember the Beijing Olympics back in 2008 when he invaded Georgia? This August he is applying the same tactics against Aleppo that he used against Grozny during the two Chechen Wars. The shooting down of a Russian Air Force helicopter some 8 km from where a barrel bomb had just been dropped is eerily reminiscent of the destruction of Grozny. As is the offer to ‘assist’ with humanitarian efforts, but only so long as such efforts are under the complete control of both Damascus and Moscow.

What is the West doing about it? Next to nothing. Limited coalition raids are being mounted against ISIS targets, but nothing to resolve the situation in Syria. There was an interesting piece in the British digital newspaper The Independent last week by Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders. Sad to say it was all too typical of the ‘something must be done, but not too much, and not by me’ nonsense beloved of Europe’s handwringing, strategically-inept political elite.

Entitled Aleppo must not become synonymous with global inaction the title was carefully worded, particularly the use of the phrase, ‘global inaction’. Of course, Koenders should really have said ‘Western inaction’ or to be more precise ‘European inaction’. Why? Because as a foreign minister he knows all too well that without UN Security Council agreement ‘global’ action is a non-starter. Yes, the piece likens Aleppo to Srebrenica and the dark chapter in UN and Dutch peacekeeping when Dutchbat permitted the Bosnian Serbs to murder thousands of Bosnian Muslims. Yes, Koenders makes the valid point that most Syrians want to live neither under the murderous Caliphate nor under the equally murderous Assad regime, and their cynical Russian and Iranian backers who see the Syrian people as no more than very small pawns in a great geopolitical game.

What he suggests as a solution is both clever and disingenuous. Koenders calls for a stepped up campaign against ISIS and a much greater humanitarian effort. However, what he wilfully fails to point out in the piece is that in Syria humanitarian action cannot be effective without strategic action. In other words, any alleviation of suffering and/or defeat of ISIS is not possible without either confronting Russia and removing Assad, or accommodating Russia and talking to Assad. It is a stark choice that has been obvious for some time but which Koenders and his fellow leaders have pretended they need not make.

Confronting Russia and Assad at this stage would require the West to threaten a major military land, sea intervention, involving both Western and Arab forces. That is not going to happen. Turkey is now close to being a failed state and no longer a sound base from which to launch such an assault. President Obama is a lame duck president who can at best order a few air strikes against ISIS in Libya. Europe has become strategic prey and abandoned all pretence of engaging danger at distance and simply waits these days for danger to come to Europe, mitigate the effects, and/or pretend no danger exists.

Thus, there is only the alternative? If the West/Europe is not prepared to act against Assad and Putin it must talk to Assad and Putin if there is to be any chance of an alleviation of the suffering of the Syrian people. There are many factors that have led Syria to this point but Western, in particular European, weakness is a major factor. Sadly, it is weakness typified by a European political elite of which Koenders is a part.  

So, as America blusters the summer away in what is perhaps the worst US general election in American history, and Europe slumbers on what is now a permanent strategic vacation Assad and Putin will continue to act with impunity. No amount of hand-wringing articles by impotent foreign ministers from small European states who have decimated their own ability to influence big, dangerous events will matter a jot.

Let me be clear; Syria is the new Chechnya and Aleppo is the new Grozny. In the two Chechen wars Putin believed that the only way to break the secessionist movement was to destroy Grozny. Assad, with Russian backing, is now determined to wipe Aleppo out. And, like Chechnya, both Assad and Putin will give the West just enough excuse to turn away and do nothing.

The consequences? Many thousands more will die and in October at the latest President Erdogan of Turkey will abrogate the March 2016 deal with the EU and open the floodgates to hundreds of thousands of refugees seeking to escape to Europe. Then, Europe will again see the folly of being too weak to stop what is happening in Syria.

Still, there is always the Olympics to watch.

Julian Lindley-French           

Advance Britannia!

Alphen, Netherlands. 21 July. Britain stands at a grand strategic juncture. In a speech broadcast from 10 Downing Street on VE Day, 8 May 1945, and entitled “Advance Britannia”, Winston Churchill said, “We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing, but let us not forget for a moment the toil and efforts that lie ahead”. Thankfully, post-Brexit Britain does not find itself prostrate on the rocks of penury having fought a six year war in the defence of Europe’s freedom. As Churchill made his famous speech British debt to GDP stood at 250%, compared with a contemporary ratio of a still too-high but manageable 89.2%. However, if Britannia is to advance Prime Minister May must be under no illusions about the culture, thinking, and groups she must either change or face down if Britannia is truly to advance. Who are they?

Scottish secessionists: The Scottish Neverendum Party (SNP) represents a clear and present danger to the Union because they will use any excuse to secede. Secession is, after all, why they exist. Prime Minister May must face them down, not least by pointing out the inconsistencies in their case, and not just about Scotland’s economic fundamentals. The SNP fought the 2014 independence referendum with a clear understanding that if they succeeded they would take Scotland out of the EU. Now, they are claiming to fight for independence to keep Scotland in the EU. Worse, by campaigning in the UK-wide Brexit referendum SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon legitimised the vote as a UK-wide vote. To claim now it legitimises her call for a second independence neverendum might be clever politics, it is also rank hypocrisy. A renewed clash over the future of Britain is now inevitable.

Remoaners and lawyers: My on balance preference was for Britain to remain in the EU. However, I am a democrat and accept the decision of a majority of the British people to quit, as I would have accepted the settled will of the Scottish people had they voted to quit the UK in the 2014 once-in-a-generation referendum. Efforts by those on the losing side to change the result by legal hook or political crook are appalling. If they succeed democracy will be well and truly dead in the UK, to be replaced by legal fiat. This is a battle that has been long in the making between Parliament and a section of the judiciary who routinely seek to use European law to erode parliamentary sovereignty. Brexit must indeed mean Brexit, and democracy must indeed mean democracy.

Little Britons: Some of the post-Brexit commentary about a post-EU Britain demonstrates the extent to which many in London do not understand power. One of my critiques of the EU has been the extent to which Brussels has hastened the retreat of many Europeans from power in favour of often vague, vacuous, dangerously self-defeating and self-deluding ‘values’. Too often the EU has failed to aggregate the power of its member-states into strategic influence and effect. This has contributed markedly to the culture of decline management one finds at the heart of Westminster and Whitehall, and which has done so much damage to Britain and its strategic brand.

Little Englanders: Then there are triumphant little Englanders, some of whom seem to think a post-Brexit Britain is on the verge of rebuilding the British Empire. There are signs that the clunkily-named (I think I named it!) world Anglosphere is beginning to swing behind Britain. However, the Anglosphere must not be seen as an alternative to engagement with Europe. Little Englanders are particularly deluded over immigration. Britain’s power is established on its facility and ability as a trading nation. Given the link between trade and the free-ish movement of peoples the only real choice, and by extension control, post-Brexit Britain will have over immigration is from whence it comes and for what purpose. The real choice Britain faces in this world is between wealth and power or poverty and weakness.

Vengeful Europeans: There are those in Europe, particularly in the Élysee Palace it would appear, who want Britain ‘punished’ for exercising democracy. They and their ilk should be left under no illusion that whatever the domestic pressures they face a pragmatic and respectful Brexit is in the best interests of all. The alternative is the mutual impoverishment and weakening of the democracies, and the strengthening of real adversaries and enemies. Thankfully, Chancellor Merkel appears to understand that, even if she will do all she can to protect German interests during the Brexit negotiations.

Economists: …because all things being equal they do not understand power and are wrong about everything.  

          

The May Strategic Agenda: Prime Minister May must now rebuild the very idea of Britain and build it on power fundamentals. Britain is the world’s fifth biggest economy and the world’s fourth biggest defence spender. Britain is not the small island that some would have it and in any case power not geography (Mackinder or no!) dictates influence and effect. From a defence-strategic viewpoint the British armed forces will have a particularly important role to play in rebuilding the idea of Britain. This is not because the future Britain will be militaristic or nationalistic, heaven forbid! However, a country needs a sense of moderate patriotism to function and such patriotism must identify with a legitimate strategic brand that is built on power. And, given the dangerous world into which Britain is moving the armed forces must combine with Britain’s amazing soft power to communicate to the world British strength and stability. When Britain’s strategic brand is strong, Britain and the world are a safer place.

      

To succeed Prime Minister May will need to combine strategic imagination, purpose and resolution. For too long the very idea of Britain has been suborned by political correctness, nationalist secessionists, those for whom the very idea of country is bad, nostalgic idiots, and short-termist, visionless politicians who have allowed the very idea of Britain to whither, and for whom Britain is mere balance-sheet. From the conversations I have had it was precisely such views of Britain that were rejected by the pragmatic and informed many in my native Yorkshire, the heartland of the Great Revolt.

Churchill finished his VE Day broadcast with a call to peaceful arms that is no less relevant today. “We must now devote all our strength and resources to the completion of our task both at home and abroad. Advance Britannia! Long live the cause of freedom! God save the King!”

Julian Lindley-French

Two Coups Turkey

“My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth, and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will, every man can follow his own conscience provided it does not interfere with sane reasons or bid him act against the liberty of his fellow men”.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Founder and First President of the Turkish Republic

Alphen, Netherlands. 18 July. Two coups took place in Turkey this past weekend. The first coup was an exercise in military incompetence. The second coup is still underway and as coups go it is being exercised both brilliantly and ruthlessly. As a friend of Turkey both coups sadden me, not only because 265 people were killed and over 1400 wounded, but Turkey this weekend could well have ceased to be a strong Western state, and instead become a weak Middle Eastern potentate. With the arrest of over 6000 people, some 3000 of them members of the judiciary, this weekend could also mark the final, irrevocable eclipse of President Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s visionary 1923 constitution and his dream of a secular Turkish state which he crafted from the wreckage of the Ottoman Empire and which sought to uphold the rights of all Turkish citizens.

A few years back I stood on the towering spot where Ataturk had commanded his troops during his brilliant defence of Gallipoli just over a century ago. His eyes were cast to the West even as he defended his country against the forces of France and the British Empire. Strategically, Turkey is just as important now as it was back then. Indeed, Turkey is the pivotal power, sitting at the strategic crux of east and west, north and south.

For many years I have cut President Erdogan political slack. Turkey is not a Western European state and governing Turkey has never been easy, and in any case the rest of Europe has been utterly duplicitous in its dealings with Ankara. For years the EU has pretended to promise eventual Turkey membership, and Turkey has pretended to believe the EU. Now, incompetent elements of the Turkish armed forces have helped President Erdogan step over the threshold between democracy and autocracy upon which he has been standing.

The irony is that President Erdogan can also legitimately wrap himself in Ataturk’s flag in the wake of the coup and claim he is protecting the very Kemalist constitution he could well now destroy. as Turkey shifts from parliamentary democracy to presidential fiat. A kind of ‘sovereign democracy’ beloved of the likes of Russia’s President Putin.

So, how could this happen? The failed military coup followed the same pattern as the ‘interventions’ by the Army in 1960, 1971, 1980, and 1997, all of which were designed to restore Ataturk’s order. It is also hard to avoid the conclusion that that elements within the officer corps were goaded into this coup. For months now Army officers have been complaining that President Erdogan was weakening the Army, purging secular officers, and side-lining the Army from its self-appointed role as ‘guardians’ of Ataturk’s republic. Suspiciously President Erdogan issued several warnings that some form of coup was imminent.

   

What are the implications for Turkey? Contemporary Turkey is split roughly three ways between a European-leaning, more liberal west, a conservative heartland from which President Erdogan draws much of his support, and the Kurds in the south and east of the country. The speed with which President Erdogan has moved to round up opponents has the feel of a pre-planned operation. In the short-term there is no doubt Erdogan’s power will be further enhanced. However, as it becomes clear that the Turkish Republic is slipping into a kind of democratic dictatorship wrapped in a pale green cloaks of Islamism then the acute divisions within the country will likely become more evident. At the very least tensions between President Erdogan’s APK government and the Kurdish PKK will increase.

The implications for the West are equally profound. Turkey has the second largest army in NATO. It is an army that has been weakened, and will be further weakened, as President Erdogan purges any elements in the officer corps he suspects of complicity in this plot. Worse, a powerful cornerstone of European security has been weakened and will continue to be weak for some time to come. This raises a host of questions about the viability of the West’s anti-ISIS and anti-Assad strategies. Operations against ISIS have already been disrupted with the temporary closure of the vital Incirlik air base this weekend. There are also now real questions as to the willingness of Turkey to assist in managing the migrant flows from the Levant to Europe. Certainly, much will now depend on the tone and tenor of criticism from a Europe, not a few leaders of which probably hoped the coup might succeed, if it had led to a more amenable Turkish leader with which to deal.

Therefore, Turkey’s two coup weekend has winners and losers. The winners are President Putin’s Russia and ISIS as both benefit from a divided Turkey no longer anchored as firmly in the West as it was even last week. The loser is the West, as it could well be that Turkey ceased to be a member this past weekend. At the very least there will need to be a lot of patient and clever diplomacy to keep Turkey looking westwards.

However, the biggest loser will be democracy and the Turkish people. Indeed, Turkey’s Great Man must be spinning in his magnificent marble tomb in Ankara this morning. As President Ataturk once said, “Victory is for those who can say “victory is mine!” Success is for those who can begin saying “I will succeed” and say “I have succeeded” in the end”.

Julian Lindley-French         

China; Might or Right: EU; Right or Might?

Alphen, Netherlands. 13 July. Geopolitics is a permanent power struggle between symmetry and asymmetry. There is certainly a certain symmetry in the delicious coincidence of the launch of the new EU Global Strategy and the rejection yesterday in The Hague by the UN’s Permanent Court of Arbitration of China’s feisty claim to some three million square kilometres of the South China Sea, through which some $5 trillion of trade passes every year, and under which huge oil and gas resources are believed to be oozing and bubbling invitingly away.

Whereas Globstrat is the usual blah blah that passes for ‘strategy’ in the EU, China’s quick denunciation of The Hague judgement, and de facto rejection of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), suggests a twenty-first century that could be every bit as cold as the waters Beijing claims as its own. For Europeans events in the South China Sea are equally momentous and beg THE geopolitical question; are pious words ever going to be matched by real power? It is EU yawn versus Chinese brawn.

China has certainly acquired a lot of brawn of late. In 2016 China will increase its defence expenditure by 8% to around $150 billion. Paradoxically, an 8% increase in Chinese defence expenditure is the lowest such percentage increase since 1989.  Between 1989 and 2015 the Chinese defence budget grew year-on-year by more than 10%. The key stat is this; in a conservative estimate CNN values the size of the US economy in 2016 at $19 trillion, with the Chinese economy worth some $12 trillion. The US will spend some 3.4% of GDP on defence in 2016, with the Chinese spending 8%. Therefore, one has only to do the ‘math’, as the Yanks say, to realise the trouble that could well lie not too far ahead.      

Furthermore, whilst Chinese defence expenditure would appear to be far below 2016 US defence expenditure of $573 billion, the gap is not as wide as it appears. First, the US must spread its forces and resources across the globe; China concentrates its military power by and large on East Asia. Second, declared Chinese defence expenditure is believed to be far lower than the actual amount Beijing invests in ‘defence’, particularly in defence research and development. Third, China would appear to get more ‘yang’ for each yuan invested, than the Americans get bang for each buck. Pork barrel politics and sequestration have done terrible damage to the US military.

The EU? Lots of yawn. In 2016 EU members will spend some $200 billion. However, that expenditure is badly fractured and generates nothing like the same bang for each euro/pound etc., spent as either the Americans or the Chinese.  Moreover, the British 25% of EU defence expenditure is about to quit the Union, taking with it some 40% of defence research and technology investment.

Taken together Globstrat and The Hague judgement suggest a geopolitical tipping point which could point to either peace…or war. Read the official Chinese government statement on The Hague judgement and it is uncompromising. However, read between the lines and Beijing clearly leaves some wriggle room for a negotiated settlement with Brunei, the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Vietnam all of which contest the Chinese claim. However, if China continues to turn the series of reefs it has seized of late into military bases, and then moves to exclude the air and sea forces of other states from the South China Sea, then Beijing will be set irrevocably on a collision course with other powers, most notably the United States.

As for the EU if ‘discourse’ is not matched by force and resource then Globstrat will be yet another one of those European exercises in empty geopolitics that sooner or later collapses under the weight of the very meaningless acronyms it generates. If the EU strategy was indeed ‘global’ EU foreign and security policy ‘supremo’ Federica Mogherini would be meeting with European leaders this morning to consider the EU’s position on the South China Sea, and what support Europeans could offer the democracies in the region. There will of course be a statement, but the very idea of ‘EU action’ is absurd, which is precisely why the EU is NOT a global actor.

Globstrat will certainly spawn a lot of talk.  Endless Brussels meetings of endlessly ambitious young think-tankers will now ensue in which the illuminati try endlessly to find signs of grand substance where in fact there is none. Globstrat will be minutely examined with each word parsed for signs of life in the corpse that is Europe’s ‘strategic culture’. Brexit happened because too many in Brussels and elsewhere refused to heed warnings of impending disaster, choosing instead to shoot the messenger. If Europeans continue to merely talk about geopolitics, but not act on them, a far greater disaster awaits       

However, China too must also face realities which begs another question; why is China so determined to control the South China Sea? Beijing believes that only a state with access to assured natural resources can assure power and influence in the twenty-first century. The Communist Party believes the only way to maintain power is to honour the post-Tiananmen 'contract' by which the Party retains unquestioned power, in return for guaranteeing improving living standards. That 'contract' can only be honoured if China controls 'strategic' resources.

Beijing has a choice to make. China is not a liberal democracy, but nor is President Xi a President Putin, for all the former’s strong ties with the People’s Liberation Army. For the past thirty years China has done well by supporting and often exploiting the ‘rules’ of the international system. However, China’s extra-sovereign behaviour and its ridiculous ‘historical’ claim to almost the entirety of the South China Sea, based on no more than a spurious nine-dash line on a strange map that appeared from nowhere in the 1940s, suggests a China for which might is fast becoming right, even if for China it is patently wrong.   

China must seek a negotiated settlement to the South China Sea dispute for such a settlement is in the Chinese national interest and would demonstrate the real leadership to which China rightly aspires. As for Mrs Mogherini and her Globstrat at some point she will be forced to answer the same question Stalin once asked of the Vatican; how many divisions does it have?

China might or right; EU right or might?

Julian Lindley-French 

Iraq: The Strategic Lessons of Chilcot

“The danger is, as ever with these things, unintended consequences”

Prime Minister Tony Blair, 2002

Alphen, Netherlands. 7 July. It is 12 volumes and 2.6 million words in length and took 7 years to prepare. Yesterday afternoon I spent reading the 150 pages of the Executive Summary of Sir John Chilcot’s magnus opus The Iraq Enquiry. The strategic implications of what is a damning report into Tony Blair’s leadership of Britain at the time of the 2003 Iraq War are profound. Indeed, given the report’s condemnation (not too strong a word) of the failings of Britain’s political, intelligence, and military elites Chilcot brings into question the very utility in any circumstances of Western intervention in the Middle East and elsewhere. Indeed, Chilcot begs a question that the good knight himself does not answer; how do western states deal with the very real threats that do emanate from such places?  The West intervened in Afghanistan and Iraq and stayed; the result was disaster. The West intervened in Libya but did not stay; the result was disaster. The West did not really intervene in Syria; the result was disaster.

In recent (and not so recent history) few such Western efforts to shape the Middle East have achieved their stated objectives.  Indeed, in what is now a history of ill-considered consequences there is a certain tragic symmetry in the fact that the July 2016 Chilcot Report was published a century after the May 1916 Sykes-Picot Accord, which led to the creation of Iraq and so many other troubled Middle Eastern states. 

Chilcot underpins the need for sound strategic judgement that was lacking at times in the post 911 political environment. Chilcot reinforces the need for political leaders to understand what is possible on the ground. For example, there is a marked contrast between the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 Gulf War. Whereas the 1991 war was undertaken to uphold the Middle East state structure, the 2003 war set out to change the very nature of the Middle Eastern state. Powerful unintended consequences ensued because powerful unwanted forces were unleashed because powerful people, especially in Washington, refused to confront powerful realities.  Indeed, Iraq was too often more about politics inside the Beltway, rather than security outside of it.

Chilcot firmly asserts that if such an intervention is to be launched it must be properly planned, resourced and forced. None of the West’s post-911 interventions have been properly planned and all have failed, including Afghanistan.  In fact, sound planning was indeed undertaken for post-‘conflict’ Iraq by the State Department’s ‘Iraq Shack’. However, President George W. Bush took responsibility for such planning away from State because he did not trust it and handed it to the Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon, which had no experience of such work. The subsequent Coalition Provisional Authority was a disaster.

Chilcot also warns of the dangers of politicising intelligence. Tony Blair had a whole raft of reasons for wanting to stay close to Bush, not least maintaining US support for the peace process in Northern Ireland. However, his lack of influence in the Bush White House was in stark contrast to his desperate need to remain close to Bush. This helped lead Blair to interpret the work of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) purely through the lens of the transatlantic security relationship rather than wider British interests. It is certainly to the chagrin if not the shame of the elite British civil service that so many did not challenge the Downing Street clique, most notably the British Intelligence services. Iraq revealed the politicisation of the once masterful British civil service which continues to this day, and which even today too often prevents truth being spoken to irresponsible power.

Chilcot is also clear about British military failure. The British Army was humiliated in Iraq, a humiliation that perhaps marked the beginning of the end of the special ‘Special’ US-UK Relationship. The gap between the military power Britain’s leaders said Britain could exert in support of the US soon proved to be false, even though the Americans must also take a lot of the blame for going into Iraq before all the forces and resources necessary to succeed were in place. Britain’s influence in Washington was sorely damaged as a result, and has never really recovered.

One has only to look at the Defence Planning Assumptions in the UK’s 1998 Strategic Defence Review to understand that putting a front-line force in excess of 40,000 troops into Iraq would break the troop bank, to then ‘plan’ in 2006 to go to Afghanistan as well before the mission in Basra was complete was dangerous military nonsense. The Defence Logistics Organisation effectively collapsed in 2003. That is why the occupation force was far smaller than the invasion force and why good military commanders and their civilian counterparts struggled to create a secure space in which stabilisation and reconstruction could take place. However, Britain’s top military commanders at the time must also shoulder some of the blame because they went into Iraq not to succeed but to get out as quickly as possible.

The failure in Iraq may have also marked the beginning of the end of Britain’s membership of the EU. After championing Britain’s future in the EU, and being seen as a de facto leader by many of the new Central and European members of an enlarged EU, Blair’s failure effectively ended Britain’s influence in the EU and ceded leadership to Germany. The opposition of France and Germany to the war proved to be correct, although the motivations of President Chirac and Chancellor Schroeder were complex.  The subsequent split between Britain on one side, and France and Germany on another, has never really healed and the slide towards Brexit accelerated.

Chilcot addresses another issue – method. In 2008 I wrote two reports following a fact-finding visit to Afghanistan. Both reports highlighted the same problems of commission and omission. Put simply, if a Western state or group of states is going to intervene in places like Afghanistan or Iraq it is vital the ‘human terrain’ is properly understood and all national and international means – civil and military – are applied carefully and rigorously to generate outcomes that give the inhabitants hope of positive change. This all-important unity of effort and purpose backed up by sufficient forces and resources was never achieved in either country leaving military commanders to try and close an impossible gap between intent, capability and capacity.

There is also a dangerous flip-side to Chilcot. In the wake of Iraq Britain steadily lost strategic self-confidence, the elite belief in Britain as a power collapsed, and with it there was a loss of British popular faith in both US leadership and in Britain’s own Establishment. It also demonstrated the extent to which keeping on the right side of a poorly-led Washington led Blair and his close clique to lose the strategic plot as the relationship between ends, ways and means descended into political fantasy.

At the start of this piece I raised a question implicit in Chilcot about the very principle of armed intervention; how do western states deal with the very real threats that do emanate from such places?  A hard truth is that there will be occasions in future when such interventions will sadly be necessary. The world is a dangerous place. If Chilcot leads to improved strategic judgement, better understanding of the challenge, the proper political use of intelligence, the re-establishment of appropriate distance between politicians and civil servants, and the closing of the gap between the roles and missions political leaders expect of armed forces, and the forces and resources needed to do the job asked of them, then all well and good. If, on the other hand, Chilcot leads British and other Western political leaders to conclude that they never want to find themselves alongside Blair facing a political, media and public opinion ‘lynching’ and abandon the very idea of military interventions in extremis then the post-Chilcot world is suddenly more not less dangerous. Reading Chilcot I was struck at times just how political the report is.

Ultimately, Tony Blair achieved the exact opposite of what he said he set out to achieve in Iraq and went to war on a false premise.  Over 150,000 Iraqis died, together with some 179 British military personnel, whilst over one million people were displaced. Blair and the Britain he led must bear full responsibility such for failure. However, the real blame ultimately lies with President George W. Bush and Messrs Cheney and Rumsfeld who at the time confused the need for revenge and ideological fervour for sound statecraft.  The threshold for Western military intervention in the Middle East or anywhere must be necessarily high. Chilcot may now have set that threshold impossibly high.

Julian Lindley-French

        

   

NATO: The Enduring Alliance 2016

Alphen, Netherlands. 4 July. On the eve of the NATO Warsaw Summit it is my honour to announce the publication of my latest hard-hitting report: NATO: The Enduring Alliance 2016: Twenty Vital Defence Planning and Related Questions the NATO Warsaw Summit Should Address…but will probably not.

Launched last week in Warsaw for FWPN the report considers the questions the political leaders of the Alliance should answer given the threats posed to NATO and in light of Brexit:

Is NATO fit for twenty-first century purpose?
Who has real power?
What if war breaks out in Europe?
Just how dangerous is Russia?
Can NATO defend itself?
Is Europe serious about defence?
Is the NATO defence and deterrence posture credible?
Do political NATO and military NATO agree about war?
Can Central Europeans influence Europe’s defence?
Is the balance of power in NATO Europe shifting?
What is the EU planning?
What are the strategic implications of Brexit?
Can Germany lead European defence?
Would a European Defence Union work?
Are NATO and the EU compatible?
Has NATO the strategic imagination to fight a new war?
Do NATO Europe’s leaders have the political courage to think about war?
What price will the Americans demand?
What critical defence planning issues must Warsaw address?
Is NATO the enduring Alliance?

You can download the full report for free via the Atlantic Treaty Association website:

http://atahq.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/FWPN-JLF-NEA-2016-FINAL-230616.pdf

Julian Lindley-French 

Brexit: I Told You So!

Dear All,

Below is a segment from a paper I wrote for the French think tank Fondation de la Recherche Strategique in Paris in February....I told you so!

"It is the morning of 24^th June, 2016. Britain and the rest of Europe, indeed the rest of the world, are coming to terms with the shock result of the Brexit referendum the night before. By a majority of 52% to 48% the British people voted to quit the European Union. Prime Minister David Cameron goes before the TV cameras to announce that he has accepted the settled will of the British people. He takes full responsibility for the result and announces that Britain will invoke Article 50 of the Treaty of European Union and begin the two-year ‘deaccession’ of the United Kingdom from the European treaties and institutions. He also announces his resignation forthwith as prime minister...

The rest of a shocked EU is faced with a quandary. Conscious that on this grey June morning the EU’s erstwhile second power might have set a dangerous precedent for withdrawal an emergency EU summit is called. Reactions across Europe range from pleading with the British people to think again, to outright condemnation of the British as ‘traitors’ to the very idea of a Europe Britain helped forge in blood. Quietly, some hard-line Euro-federalists express satisfaction that political integration can now proceed without the applied brake that London has come to represent for decades.

Berlin and Paris are under no illusions about the strategic and political implications of Britain’s split, especially so as President Putin continues to exert pressure on Europe’s eastern flank, and migrants continue to pour in from Europe’s southern flank. Privately, Chancellor Merkel and President Hollande admit they should have tried harder to bring Britain into the Franco-German directoire. Across the Atlantic a lame duck President Obama joins presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to express regret having pushed hard for Britain to remain within the EU. After all, Washington have long seen the British as a strategic convenience and a tool to influence the EU. However, Obama also expresses confidence that now the issue has been ‘settled’ the transatlantic relationship in all of its myriad economic, social, political, and, of course, military forms can move forward. Donald Trump, just anointed Republican presidential nominee, says he really does not care, and that he will be happy to work with Britain as president. Mischievously, President Putin congratulates the British people for having chosen the path of ‘sovereignty’. In fact, for all the concerned leaders Brexit is a leap into the political dark for no-one knows what the strategic implications of Britain’s historic decision to quit EU will be".

Not that I am gloating...the situation is far too serious for that. Well, just a little bit.

Julian Lindley-French

The Battle of the Somme

“The English generals are wanting in strategy. We should have no chance if they possessed as much science as their officers and men had of courage and bravery. They are lions led by donkeys”.

General Erich Ludendorff.

1 July, 2016.  Zero Hour One Hundred Years plus Two. It was the bloodiest day ever for the British Army. A century ago some 300 kilometres/190 miles to the south of me the “big push” was underway. Twenty-nine British Army divisions were advancing across no man’s land in the face of heavy machine gun, mortar, infantry and artillery fire laid down by seven defending German divisions across a 50 km/30 mile front. By Zero plus Five the British had taken some 55,000 casualties, of whom 20,000 were dead.

The reason for the Battle of the Somme was the Battle of Verdun. By 1 July, 1916 the French Army had already been fighting on the charnel fields of Verdun for 134 days. German commander General Erich von Falkenhayn reportedly said his aim at Verdun was to bleed France white. Between February and December 2016 the French Army would suffer up to 540,000 casualties, of whom some 150,000 would be killed.

The French commander-in-chief Marshal Joffre pleaded with the British to launch a major offensive in the west to ease the pressure on French lines at Verdun. Crucially, British commander-in-chief General Sir Douglas Haig believed German forces had suffered sufficient attrition at Verdun to believe a combined Anglo-French assault on the German lines would succeed. Haig even believed it might be possible to enact a complete breakthrough of German defences and commence a rout. The Somme area was chosen for the offensive because it was where British and French forces stood alongside each other.

Five days prior to the offensive the British started an enormous artillery barrage that saw over one million shells fired at the German defences right up until the commencement of the advance. The fact that such a barrage could be mounted was proof the British had overcome the crippling shortage of artillery shells from which the British Army had suffered since the outbreak of war in August 1914.

The British offensive should have succeeded, at least on paper. British forces enjoyed more than a three-to-one superiority in men and materiel. However, the offensive failed. The reasons for failure are manifold.  However, in the intervening century the myth of the Somme has become overpowering and made it hard to discern fact from fiction.

The British Army at the Somme included in its ranks a significant number of Kitchener’s New Army. This was a newly-formed, ‘green’ (inexperienced) ‘citizen army’, which included the Sheffield City Battalion, from my own home town, and which fought with distinction on 1 July at Serre.  However, there were also a large number of battle-hardened British, Australian, Canadian, New Zealand and other forces committed to the Somme offensive.

Marshal Joffre had promised the British that the French force on Haig’s right flank would be equal in size to that that of the British. However, by late June the French Army was simply unable to put such a force into the line such was the pressure being exerted on them by Falkenhayn at Verdun.

However, it was not green pal’s battalions or the French that did for Haig’s Somme offensive. It was Haig himself who doomed the Somme offensive to failure through bad strategy and over confidence.  By committing to a front some 30 km/50 miles wide the British force was spread far too thinly. The artillery barrage whilst impressive did nothing like the damage expected to the well-engineered German trenches and forewarned the enemy as to the scale and location of the offensive. Cohesion between the British divisions, and communications between high command and operational commanders was via a rudimentary command chain that was unable to withstand the confusion of a dynamic offensive after so long having been committed to a relatively static defence.

By November 18, 1916, when Haig called off the offensive, the British had gained an area some 12 km/9 miles deep and some 25 km/20 miles wide, but had suffered 623,907 casualties at a rate of some 3000 casualties per day. However, German losses also numbered 465,000 casualties. Conscious that the German Army could not suffer such losses again over the winter of 1916/1917 the Germans engineered the fearsome Hindenburg line behind the Somme battlefield to which they retreated in February 2017. Crucially, the Somme offensive did indeed help relieve pressure on the French Army at Verdun.

Lessons were learned from the failed Somme offensive. In March 1918 Ludendorff launched Operation Michael, a last desperate attempt by the German High Command to split British and French forces which were being reinforced daily by the arrival of US forces. German Stormtroopers were unleashed across what had been the old Somme battlefield. At first the British reeled back but crucially did not break.

At the Battle of Amiens, which commenced on 8 August, 1918, on what Ludendorff called the “black day of the German Army”, an exhausted German force faced a new new All Arms assault by the British. Out of the mist an enormous artillery barrage was unleashed, but this time British, Australian, Canadian, Indian and New Zealand forces, supported by American and French forces, and all under a ‘supreme’ unified command, advanced right behind the barrage employing new flexible ‘grab and hold’ infantry tactics. The force was also supported by a large number of tanks and massive air power.

Crucially, the assault took place over a much narrower front than the Somme offensive enabling the British force to punch through German lines. The German Army true to its tradition fought bravely but as an offensive force it was broken at Amiens. German commanders of a later generation studied the All Arms Battle very closely, but they gave it another name – Blitzkrieg! 

                    

In memory of all the fallen on all sides at the Battle of the Somme which began one hundred years ago today.

Julian Lindley-French

      

Brexit from Poland

Warsaw, Poland. 29 June. It has been an interesting couple of days. My reason for coming here on the eve of the NATO Warsaw Summit was to present my new paper, NATO: The Enduring Alliance 2016 for the German Polish Co-operation Foundation. However, the 65 million person elephant in the room for much of the debate was of course Brexit. Part of me wondered what kind of reception I would get. After all, in the past I called for Britain to leave the EU, I predicted Brexit, before I decided after talking to a lot of people, and in the wake of the Paris attacks, that on balance Britain should remain. My concerns were misplaced. Poland of all countries understands the difficulty of balancing patriotism, interdependence, and membership of an institution a significant part of which would like to replace the democratic state with an oligarchic super-state.

What I found instead this morning at the Sjem, Poland’s parliament, when speaking to senior parliamentarians, was a respect for the democratic decision of the British people. What I also found was Polish pragmatism. Poland deeply regrets Brexit. However, there was absolutely no sense that the British people should somehow be punished for having the temerity to have expressed a majority opinion on a matter of fundamental import to them. Rather, there was a genuine commitment to forge a new relationship for Britain with the EU, and to confirm Britain’s existing relationships with friends and allies on the Continent. The terrible events in Istanbul last night served as a stark reminder of the dangers we all face and must all face together.

Encouragingly it was also an opinion of hope and goodwill expressed by Ambassador Rolf Nikel, Germany’s envoy to Poland, at a delightful reception held last night at the German Embassy. Indeed, the only humiliation to which I was subjected concerned the tactical withdrawal from the European football championships by England following their defeat by mighty Iceland. Don’t worry.  I immediately countered by enquiring as to the state of Berlin’s new airport!  

Poland is committed to keep the British fully engaged in the security and defence of Europe. They are right. To that end the forthcoming NATO Warsaw Summit must to some extent be a Brexit summit. Indeed, it will be a chance for London to remind it allies and partners that Britain remains a power and is utterly committed to the security and defence of Europe. There is one caveat. David Cameron and George Osborne are talking of more cuts to public expenditure in light of Brexit. It would certainly be a mistake to cut the British defence budget any further. It would also be advisable to re-invest in Britain’s diplomatic machine as London will need all the tools of influence at its disposal in the coming years.     

So, Poland need not worry…too much. However, Poland’s help would be much appreciated, recognising Warsaw faces its own political challenges at present. Forget all the pre-negotiation posturing. As France and Germany have proven in the past it is amazing how flexible European ‘principles’ are when it comes to power. A post-Brexit deal is possible. That was also the view of my Polish counterparts.

Which brings me to Scotland. If European partners such as Poland want to find a solution with and for the UK to the mutual benefit of all they must be careful how they respond to the political manoeuvrings of the Scottish Nationalist Party leader, Nicola Sturgeon. Her political mission is and always has been to destroy the UK. The Scots had a referendum in September 2014 which saw a decisive 55%-45% rejection of Scottish independence. Above all, Sturgeon legitimised the UK-wide Brexit referendum as a UK-wide referendum by campaigning in it, and by campaigning outside of Scotland for the Remain side. She can hardly cry foul simply because she lost a vote that she legitimised. She might have had a case if she had ordered the SNP to abstain on the grounds that such a referendum had not been formally endorsed by the Scottish Parliament. She did not. Therefore, countries like Poland have a choice to make; London or Edinburgh.

What struck me most about this visit is the deep and enduring human relationship between Britain and Poland. What rightly matters to Poles is the proper and respectful treatment of the up to one million Poles now living in mainly England. However, if Poland really wants to help a friend at this difficult time it could do so by recognising that it was the sheer scale and pace of inward migration that drove much of the Brexit vote. It was also the refusal of fellow Europeans to heed warnings about this.

Britain will not get access to the single market unless it upholds the principle of free movement. A huge swathe of British people will not accept a new deal with the EU unless and until some degree of pragmatic management of immigration is in place. Absolutism on either side right now will simply entrench already entrenched positions. It would be better for all of us to properly explore the possible, not retreat behind the barricades of the impossible.

So, the message from Warsaw?  Let’s all calm down, those trying to stir the pot cease and desist, and those responsible for moving us all forward…get a grip!  There will be a solution but together we must fashion it.

Julian Lindley-French