NATO’s Innovation Race

Alphen, Netherlands, 10 February.  ‘Offset’; the maintenance of strategic comparative advantage by maximising one’s own strengths, and successfully exploiting the weaknesses of adversaries and enemies. At present I am drafting a major, high-level GLOBSEC report on ‘adapting’ NATO to meet the risks, challenges and threats of the twenty-first century. In many ways ‘Adaptation’ is NATO’s own offset strategy, with innovation the key. As I draft the report I am struck by the extent and the pace of the Innovation Race in which the Alliance must now engaged.

In the past NATO and its nations have tended to enjoy the ‘luxury’ of being able to confront threats in isolation. NATO’s essential challenge today is that it must deter and defend successfully against a range of threats across the conflict spectrum, and at one and the same time. Indeed, whilst there might be no formal alliance between illiberal states and the likes of Al Qaeda and Islamic State, there is clearly a series of very dangerous linkages.

There are also a range of adversarial states and non-state actors, including China and Russia that are seeking to ‘offset’ NATO. At the higher-end of the conflict spectrum strategies range from the rapid development and modernisation of nuclear weapons, long-strike missiles and anti-space capabilities, allied to new anti-ship and anti-air military systems, cyber warfare, enhanced electronic warfare and Special Forces. At the medium to lower end of the spectrum assets, capabilities and strategies range from the use of cyber to disrupt society, including denial of service attacks on critical infrastructure, the use of the internet to further destabilise the already fragile social cohesion of rapidly changing Western societies, leavened by the extensive use of ‘fake news’ to polarise opinion in Western societies. Terror attacks seek to leverage strategic influence by cowering already sensitised populations into fatalistic submission.

The first and main offset threat to NATO is Russia’s growing reliance on a mix of nuclear weapons and hybrid warfare to offset what Moscow sees as NATO’s on-paper conventional military superiority. The second offset threat is that posed by Al Qaeda and Islamic State to Allied societies and with it the danger that terrorism will over time erode the protection of the home base, and profoundly weaken the ability of the Alliance to project security as people lose faith in the ability of governments to secure and defend them. However, there is a third offset threat which ironically could be posed by America’s own offset strategy. Technology drives and shapes policy and strategy often as much as it is shaped by them. There is now a very real danger that technologically-driven US ‘milstrat’ will advance so far ahead of allies that military interoperability, and in time political cohesion, will become impossible to maintain.

The US is looking to develop a range of capabilities and capacities that will widen the already significant chasm between US forces and those of its European Allies. At the high-end of the conflict spectrum such developments include new nuclear and space-based capabilities, advanced sensors, extreme range stand-off weapons and communication systems, the development of advanced missile defence, as well as offensive and defensive cyber capabilities.

The US is also looking further out to the future of warfare by seeking to decisively exploit new technologies by looking into areas such as robotics, system autonomy, miniaturisation, and big data. This strategy includes the development of a more innovative relationship between the Pentagon and US industry to better exploit the entire national supply chain (not simply the defence supply chain). US defence innovation also seeks to establish a form of entrepreneurial security and defence procurement that will lock both innovation and competition into the provision of the future US joint force. Europe? Whilst the British are doing some work in these areas London is investing nothing like the level of political and real capital currently being invested by the Americans. The rest of austerity Europe is being left far, far behind in the innovation arms race. 

NATO Adaptation must be part of the innovation Race. Indeed, Adaptation will only lead to a reinvigorated Alliance deterrence and defence posture if it is part of a sustained and systematic Allied strategy to balance protection and projection. Today, there is a very real danger that efforts by adversaries and enemies to offset US strengths will render an already far weaker and more vulnerable Europe, super-vulnerable to attack. That, to say the least, would be a strategic paradox, if not a little unfortunate.

NATO’s Innovation Race is not dissimilar to the naval arms race that took place between Britain and Imperial Germany between 1898 and 1914, with consequences that could be just as profound, and just as dangerous. The bottom-line is this; if the Alliance is to successfully ‘Adapt’ to the twenty-first century’s hyper-complex strategic environment America’s allies will need to smart up, not force America to dumb down.

Julian Lindley-French

Turkey First: Europe must Work with not Against Ankara

“Heroes who shed their blood and lost their lives! You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours. You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.”

President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

Alphen, Netherlands. 7 February. How should Europe deal with a changing Turkey? I say ‘Europe’, on matters strategic Europe is increasingly coming to mean a mix of great powers and great institutions acting in as much unison as they can generate over any one issue, at any one time. One of the many issues faced by what is now a hard liberal European establishment is how to deal with legitimised illiberal regimes that are important to Europe. The tendency of late has been for Europe to become a whining city on a molehill; offering judgement without influence. This tendency is particularly evident in the ‘hold one’s nose’ way European leaders deal with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey.  Consequently, Europe is in danger of losing Turkey for the first time since President Mustafa Kemal Ataturk aligned his secular regime with the European West a century ago.

The need for a new Turkey policy is pressing. In a forthcoming referendum it is likely more power will be ‘granted’ to the presidency. If so President Erdogan’s Turkey First policy will be bolstered, and Europe’s Turkey dilemma will become even more acute. Therefore, like it or not, in this new age of Realpolitik President Erdogan is vital to the security and stability of Europe and Europeans must recognise that. Unfortunately, Europe’s strategic partnership with Ankara looks ever more like a fractious frozen alliance.

Writing my latest book The New Geopolitics of Terror: Demons and Dragons (Routledge 2017), which is of course brilliant and very reasonably-priced, one theme ran through the research; the vital importance of Turkey to the security and stability of Europe, the Middle East, and much of Western Asia. Turkey is also a vital member of NATO, and Ankara’s co-operation remains critical if Europe is not to see a large portion of the 3 million refugees Turkey currently hosts moving rapidly towards Schengenland.

Why is Europe losing Turkey? Europe’s relationship with Turkey is certainly deteriorating. Last week tensions flared with Greece over disputed islands and, of course, the future of Turkish Cyprus remains a constant source of friction between the EU and Turkey.  However, it is Turkey’s burgeoning Realpolitik relationship with Russia that is of great concern to many in Europe.

Turkey First also reflects both Erdogan’s ambitions for and concerns about his country at a time or regional and global flux. Last week, in a sign of the shifting power balance, both Germany’s Merkel and Britain’s May went to Ankara, partly to reassure President Erdogan, partly to influence him. My sources tell me May’s visit was a success, Merkel’s visit less so.  Put simply, President Erdogan’s Turkey First policy reflects his feeling of abandonment, and at times betrayal by the West over Syria. Above all, President Erdogan feels deeply offended by what he saw as European fence-sitting during the failed July 2016 military coup attempt. And yet, whilst Europe is in danger of losing Turkey it has not as yet lost Turkey. It is clear Ankara is of a similar view. For example, Ankara’s attitude within NATO has been as constructive as at any time over recent years. In other words, there is still much to play for.

Much of Europe’s Turkish problem is, as so often, in Europe. Europeans tend to think that once a country is a member of a Western-leaning institution there is no need for policy towards it. The Obama administration had no policy worthy of the name towards Turkey, whilst a Europe embroiled in its endless self-obsession simply took came to take Turkey for granted. Now, President Erdogan is reminding Europeans just how mistaken such indifference is. Henceforth, like Europe’s relationship with President Trump, its relationship with President Erdogan is also likely to become far more transactional in nature.  This is particularly so now that the fantasy/pretence of forever in the future Turkish EU membership has been by and large buried.  

What would a Turkey policy look like? It would certainly need to include more trade access, more development aid, and more free movement of Turks into the EU. Indeed, it will be interesting to see the impact and implications of the eventual Brexit deal for Turkey. However, the crux of Turkey’s relationship with Europe will pivot on Turkey’s own strategic neighbourhood. It is this neighbourhood which presents both the need for, and challenge to, a new European policy towards Turkey.

In alliances policy, strategy, and structure must be constantly re-aligned. Most of that process is enacted through incremental adjustments over time. However, at times hard reality must be confronted, not finessed away, and it is precisely hard reality Europeans find so hard to either confront or manage. For Turkey that means a Europe that finally takes a position on the status of the Kurds. Ankara is deeply concerned that the instrumentalisation by the West of the Kurds in the struggle against Islamic State implies some future pay-off for the Kurds in their aspirations for a state that would straddle much of what is today northern Iraq and Syria, and which would border Turkey. Turkey would never accept the existence of such a state given the implications for its own eastern provinces.

The profound challenge for European policy-makers is thus; how can President Erdogan be reassured about Western policy towards the Kurds without at the same time (once again) abandoning the Kurds? Now, I am too much the historian to pretend there are easy solutions to what is an acute policy and strategy conundrum. However, having no policy at all on what is a key issue for a key ally at a key moment is also no option. Therefore, if Turkey is to be convinced that continued investment in its alliances and partnerships with the West is worth it then the West, Europe in particular, will need to engage on this most sensitive of issues. 

The Trump Administration may well take a purely Realpolitik position on this issue if Ankara supports US attacks on Islamic State. That would leave a dangerous policy vacuum. Particularly so, given that beyond gestures Europe has by and large retreated from any meaningful engagement in Turkey’s strategic neighbourhood. Therefore, if Europeans really want themselves and their sacred values to be taken seriously it is Europe (with Britain) which should now embark on the diplomatic challenge of assisting Turks and Kurds alike in the search for an enduring political settlement. The Turkish-Kurdish relationship is probably as important to regional peace and stability as the Israeli-Palestinian relationship. However, if, as usual, Europe bottles the challenge, issues yet more meaningless declarations or offers yet more inactive joint actions, then Turkey First could well come in time to mean Europe last.

To understand the strategic importance of Turkey to Europe, just look at a map. This importance was reinforced in my mind a few years ago in Ankara when as Acting Head of Delegation I had the honour to formally lay a wreath at the memorial tomb of President Ataturk. A few days later I was standing in General Ataturk’s World War One command position high above ANZAC Cove and Suvla Bay, where Allied troops landed in 1915, and from which they were bloodily evicted. History was, as ever, as eloquent about the present as it was about the past.

Turkey is a European power and should be treated as such. It is my firm belief that the best future for Turkey remains in a strong alliance with its Western partners. However, such alliance is also in the interests the West, particularly Europe. Therefore, Europe must stop seeing Turkey as a frozen alliance, and work far harder to convince President Erdogan that it is both friend and ally.

To do that Europeans must accord the same respect to Turkey as President Ataturk accorded other Europeans.

Julian Lindley-French  

How to Influence and not Influence President Trump

“The law of the strong is the determining factor in statecraft….the most effective form of government is one that incorporates the most powerful forces within the state”.

Ludwig von Rochau

Alphen, Netherlands. 2 February. Welcome back to the new age of Realpolitik and the dark arts of statecraft. Sad then that so much of British and wider European academia seems to be in wilful denial. Yesterday, I received a round-robin email from a Cambridge academic that began with the self-righteous sentence: “Dear All, I think everybody is agreed that Donald Trump is a threat to NATO, the EU and the western liberal order generally”. Now, as an Oxford man I suppose I could make some cheap shot about Cambridge academics. Sadly, politically correct, leftist political dogma presented as fact is too often what passes for evidence-free analysis across too much of British academia these days. There are two questions yesterday’s missive poses. Firstly, what is driving the retreat from strategic reason in Europe? Secondly, how best to influence a President Trump who remains vital to the security, defence, and stability of Europe?

Ultra-Liberal Democracy-Denying Hysteria Syndrome has again been in full flow this past week in Britain. This time the PC ‘let me off the real world’ brigade are protesting about the planned state visit by President Trump to Britain. Cheered on by media ‘luvvies’ at the BBC much has been made of an online petition that has drawn some two million signatures calling for the planned Trump visit to be cancelled. And yet, and not untypically, the BBC made very little of yesterday’s YouGov poll that showed 49% of those asked want President Trump to visit Britain, against 36% who do not.

Why the self-righteous kerfuffle? There is no question that the roll-out of President Trump’s Executive Order temporarily curtailing entry to the United States of citizens from seven countries in the Middle East has been handled with catastrophic cack-handedness. If there is a criticism to be made of the Order it is that President Trump is playing politics with strategy. In 2011 President Obama signed a similar order after it emerged that US vetting procedures were inadequate. In other words, the need to establish systems to protect the American people from terrorists posing as refugees are already in place. This White House Order is merely to pander to President Trump’s electoral base.

What is behind much of the protest has nothing actually to do with the Order itself. There is a paradoxically intolerant ‘ultra-liberal’ caste that refuses to accept a fundamental principle of democracy; that one accepts the legitimacy of a vote even if one profoundly disagrees with it. For the past twenty years or so this caste and their beloved ‘isms’ has been in the ascendancy, and by and large ridden roughshod over the concerns of millions of people about globalisation, mass-immigration et al. Brexit and President Trump are but two examples of their decline and they are determined to fight it by whatever means they can.

However, the more important question now is how best to influence the rough-edged but democratically-legitimate President Trump. In fact, the two questions come together at this point. President Trump himself reflects the decline of the western liberal order, a retreat that has been hastened by Europe’s retreat into strategic la la land. The rise of China and the re-emergence of President Putin’s Russia now sees the harsh Realpolitik of the new East matched by the business Realpolitik of President Trump, with powerless Europeans lost in an ocean-wide abyss of irrelevance in between.

This irrelevance was evident in President Tusk’s absurd suggestion yesterday that President Trump’s America, the very country that guarantees his freedom to speak nonsense, is now such a threat to ‘Europe’ that it ranks alongside China and Russia. Of course, the likes of presidents Trump, Erdogan, Putin, and quite possibly in time President Xi, are going to do deals over the heads of Europeans. Europeans have brought such impotence upon themselves by retreating these past decades into empty institutionalism and by refusing to heed the historic lessons of power and influence.

The one European leader who seems to understand this is British Prime Minister Theresa May. She was absolutely right to a) go to Washington quickly; and b) invite President Trump to Britain for a state visit. Right now, given Brexit, Britain needs the US as much as at any time since 1940. Europe does too. And yes, there will be a price. That is Realpolitik, der! Therefore, rather concentrate on finding new and novel ways to gratuitously offend President Trump Europeans should instead concentrate on how best to constructively influence him. That means at the very least Europeans coming down from their whining city on a molehill and re-learning the arts, sometimes dark arts, of statecraft.    

Here’s the twist. My instincts are in some ways those of the ultra-liberals. However, I am a pragmatic liberal, in line with most of the 49% of Britons who want President Trump to visit Britain. I also have a profound understanding of history, power and statecraft, which the ultra-liberals seems to wilfully ignore. Therefore, if I want my liberal values to eventually prevail in this hyper-competitive world I recognise I need the power and the argument to convince both friends and adversaries. The argument of weakness, however loud, indignant and obnoxious, is no argument at all.

Maybe one day a Cambridge academic might learn…but then again it is Cambridge.

Julian Lindley-French

The Re-ordering of Europe

“Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright,

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Dylan Thomas

Alphen, Netherlands. 30 January. “I was a small man in big events”. It was late afternoon when I arrived at Hamburg Hauptbahnhof on a train from somewhere, nowhere in the early 1970s. Like many English teenagers I was ‘doing’ Inter-rail. And, after nearly three weeks travelling, eating, and often sleeping on trains, I was by then the very caricature of a vintage 70s English yob. And yet, on that cold German station, I was shown kindness by an old Hamburg gentleman whom I have never forgotten. We just got talking. He had fought in World War One, the trenches of that struggle marking the front-lines of his aged face. However, it was his story of one night in July 1943 that left such an indelible impression upon me, and which in some ways drove me to where I am today.

On that clear night standing with his family on the outskirts of the great hanseatic city he had seen Hamburg burn as Operation Gomorrah was unleashed by the Allies. Transfixed in horror he watched as above him wave after wave of some 800 uncontested RAF heavy bombers had turned in unison, lined-up, and then began their bombing runs before systematically dropping cascade after cascade of death upon Hamburg, accelerating and then wheeling away in a crescendo of full-powered Merlin-engined defiance to the north and west of the city.  That night was just the beginning of the Hamburg hell, part of a re-ordering of European power that also destroyed much of Europe. 

Europe has been re-ordered many times throughout its long history. Such change has normally been triggered when one power has sought to dominate Europe. Today is no different. It is simply that European leaders refuse to look squarely at the causes of change, just like they refuse to look at so many dangers Europeans face, face on. Political correctness is the cancer of analysis.

What change? Europe today has a problem with all three of its major peripheral powers – Britain, Russia, and Turkey? On the face of it these are three very different countries with different leaders facing very different problems. In fact not. All three have a problem again with German power. Now, before many of you throw a PC fit and accuse me of Germanophobia let me set my record straight. The problem is not Germany, but power.

The problem with power in Europe is threefold. First, no state can hide from power, even its own. Second, power has its own narrative. In Europe ‘power’ and ‘history’ are two sides of a Roman coin, and have been ever since Gaius Julius Caesar defeated the Gallic hero Vercingetorix at the Battle of Alesia in 52 BC. Third, Europe has an automatic re-balancing mechanism that prevents the emergence of new Caesars. However, it is a mechanism which in history has often been as deadly as the power it seeks to re-balance.

The EU is itself one of those mechanisms. Since its inception in 1950 the European Union has basically been about Germany. Monnet’s 1943 ‘idea’ of Europe was essentially a French attempt to both embed and embrace German power in representative pan-European institutions. For many years not only did the European institutions help achieve and maintain an essential balance within Europe, ‘Europe’ also acted as a magnet for its peripheral powers, even in time Russia. However, the Eurozone crisis, the neo-pacifist German concept of soft power, and now Brexit, allied to the re-emergence of hard power as a currency of influence in Europe, is beginning yet again the age-old re-ordering of Europe. 

The paradox and tragedy of contemporary Germany is that the more it seeks to safeguard the new European liberal order it now dominates, the more the old German ‘order’ somehow re-appears. Berlin now faces a dilemma that is quite possibly impossible for it to resolve. For the European Project to survive the ‘thousand natural shocks’ that Europe is naturally heir to Berlin has tried to impose order and discipline through the European institutions. Visit any major EU institution and you will more likely than not find Germans in key positions of power. However, as Brussels has failed the EU has become to look less like a Union and more like an Empire, and thus the flame that has always re-ordered Europe has re-ignited. 

What to do? The re-ordering of Europe cannot be stopped, but it can be shaped. Much will depend on the future relationship between Europe’s now and future strongest powers, Britain and Germany. Prime Minister May’s trip last week to Washington was about far more than Britain’s vital ‘special relationship’ with the Americans. It was also about strengthening her negotiating hand with Germany prior to the March triggering of Article 50 and Britain’s Underground line to Brexit. However, May must be careful. Like it or not, she is by extension aligning Britain with illiberal Europe in the form of presidents Erdogan and Putin. That is a place Britain most certainly does not belong.

Can Britain and Germany do a deal? It is unlikely soon. Last week Axel Schäfer, one of Berlin’s Brexit negotiators, gave an interview to BBC Radio Four that was both train wreck and car crash combined. He lectured the British that Brexit was a “great illusion” and that a trade deal with Trump’s US was “delusional”. This was bombastic Germany at its very worst, not the considered German power I have come over the years to like and respect. You see, as a Briton, I do not fear the power of contemporary, liberal Germany. However, because I do not fear German power I will contest it. Above all, I will never accept being told by a German leader that ‘resistance is futile’. As I wrote in an email to Herr Schäfer too often in the past Germany has made the mistake of underestimating Britain, and paid a heavy price.

My point is not to suggest that Europeans are about to go to war with each other, but rather that small leaders like Herr Schäfer are part of big events that they do not understand, and through ignorance make worse. That is certainly the impression I have of many of today’s European leaders as they fail to grasp the enormity of the change again taking place in Europe. One of the blessings of my Oxford education is that it gave me the intellectual courage to see deep into big pictures, to understand the change behind events, not just the events themselves. Brexit, Putin, the Trump administration, Turkey, the Eurozone crisis, terrorism, the immigration crisis, and the teetering Middle East are all part of another re-ordering of power in and around Europe.

For the sake of Europe, and for the sake of that nice, old, proud German who offered his help and friendship in Hamburg’s cold, grey station all those years ago, both Britain and Germany must not under-estimate what is again happening to Europe, and most certainly must not under-estimate each other. We are friends, not enemies.

And I never did get to know my German friend’s name, even as he went gentle into the good night.

Julian Lindley-French       

May-Trump: The Dawn of the New Western Realism

“Covenants without the sword are but words, and of no strength to secure a man at all”.

Thomas Hobbes

Alphen, Netherlands. 27 January. Today, Maggie May meets Ronald Trump. As per usual much of the British political Establishment and most of the Fourth Estate have got the wrong end of the stick. They want her to talk trade, institutions, and torture. These things are indeed important but they are second order issues and not what today is about. Rather, today’s meeting has exactly the same purpose as the meeting at Argentia, Newfoundland in August 1941 at which the Atlantic Charter was agreed between Britain and the United States, and the February 1981 meeting between President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher; a chance for a supplicant Britain in need of the support of a powerful Washington to reset a relationship that remain important to the Americans but vital to the British. Whilst much will be said today about shared values and culture today is about power and, if it succeeds, quite possibly the dawn of the new Western Realism.

International relations are driven by three forces; values, interests, and power-prejudice. For too long Europeans have retreated into the vacuous pursuit of powerless values. Consequently, as structure either collapses (Middle East) around them, or threatens to be imposed upon them (Putin’s Russia) they are in many ways powerless to shape their own vital interests. Part of Britain’s contemporary tragedy is that so much of the London political class also believe in this nonsense. This profound confusion of values with interests has damaged profoundly the ability and the willingness of one of the world’s major powers to actively shape its world.

Last night in a speech to Republican congressional leaders May stated, “The days of Britain and America intervening in sovereign countries in an attempt to remake the world in our own image are over”. However, she went on, “Our values will endure. And the need to defend them and project them will be as important as ever”.  In other words, May, who is fast growing into the job, seems to be abandoning the world policeman nonsense of Tony Blair’s liberal humanitarian interventionism and re-positing British foreign policy back towards power and realism. If that is indeed her ambition then she is not only making the case for a new twenty-first century Special Relationship, but a new world-wide West centred on the Anglosphere.

The first challenge for May is not just getting America to back her vision. She also needs to overcome a force every bit as dangerous as the strategic inertia caused by the empty words of European leaders; the power-prejudice of President Trump. The flurry of executive orders over the past few days are about far more than meeting the expectations of his US electoral base. Almost all of them seem to reflect the many prejudices the President himself holds about the world. As with most things Trump there is a kernel of truth in his argument but his prescriptions and solutions are disproportionate to the challenge he seeks to address. Be it on NATO, Mexicans, Muslims, and a host of other issues President Trump’s analysis lacks balance – the very definition of prejudice. The paradox is that the President is also clearly prejudiced about the Brits – to (for the moment) Britain’s advantage.

Don’t get me wrong. I am NOT one of those Europeans who dismiss President Trump simply because he is not a failed European liberal living on a planet that is clearly not this one. Look at all the great American presidents of the last century; Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan. They were all Machiavellian out-sized characters, reinforced by out-sized and often brittle egos, who shook the status quo. If she wants an enduring relationship with President Trump Theresa May will have to do exactly what Russia’s President Putin seems to be doing – manage President Trump’s many prejudices and the brittle ego that underpins them. She will also need to understand Trump in much the same way Churchill understood FDR, or ‘Maggie’ understood ‘Ronnie’ and play to his vanity. This is a vital British interest.

At the beginning of this blog I stated that today’s meeting is about the theatre of power. However, even a ‘theatre’ of power must also reflect and showcase power. In other words, for last night’s prime ministerial words to actually lead to policy and influence Britain will need to regain a reputation for power that it has lost in Washington over the past twenty years. A loss of influence which has been underway since at least Churchill sat down with Roosevelt on the USS Augusta.

Where to begin? On May 29^th President Trump is due to be alongside Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will be aboard the brand new 75,000 ton British super aircraft-carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth as she sails for the first time into one of the Royal Navy’s historic fleet bases at Portsmouth.  The sight of an enormous warship that flies the White Ensign and not the Stars and Stripes is precisely the kind of Britain Trump needs to see. However, for Prime Minister May to succeed in reinvigorating the Special Relationship one ship visit, however spectacular, will not be enough. Having re-created the prospect and image of Britain as America’s power partner ‘leading the world together’, as she suggested in a mildly hubristic moment last night, May will need to follow-up theatre with reality by re-investing in all the tools of influence that underpin Britain’s strategic brand – intelligence, diplomacy, and the armed forces.

Britain undoubtedly has an opportunity to forge a new relationship with President Trump and his America, and in so doing help to adjust his world-view from power-prejudice into the New Western Realism. However, it is power and power alone that impresses Donald J. Trump and Prime Minister May had not only better understand that, but quickly demonstrate that her words are not yet more covenants without the sword.

Julian Lindley-French    

NATO-EU: Squeezing Big Change into Small Boxes

Alphen, Netherlands. 24 January. The new US Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, made an overnight phone call to his British counterpart and new/old bestest friend, Michael Fallon. During the call Mattis reaffirmed his and the Administration’s “unshakeable commitment” to NATO. Late last week I had the honour of addressing leaders and parliamentarians of the Baltic States at the outstanding George C. Marshall Center in Garmisch-Partenkirchen on matters strategic. What struck me as I spoke (brilliantly of course) was how the West is managing change the wrong way round. Rather than properly adapting our ‘boxes’ – NATO and the EU – to meet change, we are trying to squeeze big change into what in relative power terms are ever smaller boxes. Why?

Leadership must be judged by outcomes and if you’re a European, or an American the outcomes of late have too often been rubbish. Now, I know it is fashionable in Chicken Little Europe to condemn everything the new #POTUS says, and yes not only does #POTUS sound like a domestic vegetable but Washington’s new Tweetocracy does indeed risk reducing one of the great offices of great state to little more than a strategy-free, reactive, angry tag-line. However, the simple truth is that the so-called Euro-Atlantic ‘community’ DOES need a bloody good kick up the many well-upholstered arses of the politics before strategy leaders who claim to lead it, but frankly too often do not.

Trump has a point. At some levels NATO IS obsolete and the EU IS dysfunctional. This makes all of us UNNECESSARILY weaker and poorer at one and the same time. The reason for this decline is essentially simple; as the various Euro-Atlantic powers have diverged in their respective world views maintaining the appearance of unity has become more important than trying to agree on the real change both the Alliance and the Union desperately need if they are both to remain credible. In other words, preserving the appearance of structure has become more important than adapting structure to change.

NATO is at least having a go at change. The 2014 Wales Summit and the 2016 Warsaw Summit agreed a programme of ‘adaptation’ that is on the face of it impressive. Indeed, I have the honour of sitting on a steering committee of a group of very distinguished colleagues committed to examine NATO adaptation. We are charged with the challenge of finding a ‘One NATO’ adaptation vision for the Alliance that will not only reinforce the credibility of NATO deterrence and defence posture, but also future-proof the Alliance. We are making very good progress. However, the mission is not an easy one as it is clear to me that such is the strategic divide within the Alliance we have at least three NATOs; eastern NATO, southern NATO, and  America.

The EU is particularly good at change-speak, but hideously bad at acting on it. With Brexit the EU will soon lose some 10% of its budget, but speak to EU officials and it is as though nothing has happened. EU security and defence efforts have been and are particularly lamentable. Last week I happened upon my PhD thesis. Written many years ago and entitled, “The Security and Defence of Western Europe”, the final chapter laid out what was in effect a blueprint for what in time became the European Security and Defence Policy, then the Common Security and Defence Policy. As I re-read it I was struck by the paucity of strategic ambition in Europe over the intervening years. Names are changed, meetings are held, a few adjustments are made, hyperbole is applied, but sod all that is actually relevant to the defence of Europe actually happens.

Which brings me back to the question why? Both the Alliance and the Union suffer from a common problem that will need to change if either NATO or the EU are to be made fit for the twenty-first century – the strategic inferiority complex of many of their respective members. NATO was born in 1949 primarily of arranging Europeans into some form of order so that America could protect them. With the 1954 accession of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Alliance, NATO also took on the additional task of preventing Germany again becoming a threat to Europe. In a sense the European Project, which began its long and winding road with the 1950 creation of the European Coal and Steel Community, suffered from the same strategic inferiority complex as NATO. However, whilst in NATO Europeans over time became strategically incompetent under America’s protection, which is certainly the case today, the EU evolved into a mechanism for the small Europeans to strategically castrate bigger Europeans in the name of European stability. The result? A ‘Europe’ that is still far too obsessed with structure for structure's sake, too inward-looking, and incapable of either understanding or responding to change beyond its completely ill-defended borders beyond the odd, and quite often hideously expensive gestures.  

If NATO and the EU are to change Europeans must finally expel the last remnants of a mutual-constraint culture that has turned Europeans into strategic prey. To do that Europeans must abandon once and for all the idea that Europe can only achieve stability through mutual weakness. Instead, both the Alliance and the Union must be adapted to act as mutual aggregators of legitimate power, complete with the full, credible and capable panoply of state-owned security and military capabilities and capacities. That is exactly what Sec Def Mattis will demand of his European allies, because that will be the only way he can sell NATO to his Eurosceptic boss when he comes to Europe in May.

Like many Europeans there is much about President Donald J. Trump I find distasteful. However, I am a pragmatic, hard-bitten Realist. For that reason, and because I respect both the United States and the Office of the President of the United States, I will examine each policy position on its merits.  However, Europeans should not wait for President Trump’s prejudices to be confirmed. Even at this time of division they should endeavour to offer the Americans a more equitable vision of the future transatlantic relationship. European states are grown-up and can be trusted not to go to war with each other and they must stop using the past as an excuse not to properly prepare for the future.  The danger is that if the appearance of structure is deemed to be more important than adapting structure then sooner rather than later change will win and our structures could collapse catastrophically.

Big change is coming to transatlantic relations, and NATO and the EU must be adapted to cope with it. President Donald J. Trump is just the beginning…

Julian Lindley-French

Brexit: The Phoney War is over!

“Are you feeling lucky, punk? Go ahead, make my day!”

Theresa May, sorry Clint Eastwood, as Dirty Harry

Alphen, Netherlands. 18 January. Theresa May cut an unlikely Dirty Harry yesterday as she arrived in her tartan pyjamas to give her Global Britain speech at Lancaster House. That was at least the inference as she set out her twelve objectives to extricate Britain from the EU. As she spoke she must have would-be Euro-despot and chief European Parliament negotiator Guy Vershofstadt in mind. No deal was better than a bad deal for Brexit Britain, she said, and any attempt to ‘punish’ Britain would be met with a robust response. Time to dust off the Spitfires? Err, no. The far more sensible Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, yesterday told a private meeting in Brussels that there was no intention of ‘punishing’ Britain for leaving the EU. The aim, he said, was to seek a fair settlement for all. Still, the phoney Brexit war is now at an end. If May is to realise her ambitious objectives at the very least London will need to re-discover its long lost strategic mojo.

The speech itself was tinged at times with a little bit of Thatcher and a little bit of Churchill. Not surprisingly, many of Britain’s newspapers this morning are making the usual overblown references to the ferrous female as they do on such occasions. Britain is going to take back control of its law-making and borders, she said, and forge a new future as global free trading power. Britain, she said, would leave the single market and seek only to remain part of the customs union in those sectors where British industry is already part of an integrated supply chain, such as aerospace. To be frank, much of the speech was at last a statement of the bleeding obvious. Britain’s leaving of the single market is a no-brainer as a state cannot be a member of the single market and curb free movement within the EU. Indeed, for Brussels to concede one of the four fundamental treaty freedoms over Brexit would be tantamount to self-harm.

May did succeed in skilfully taking away much of the EU’s negotiating leverage. The message to the European Commission was clear; do you really want to deny European democracy, undermine European security, and further damage Europe’s already vulnerable economy by attacking Britain for Brexit? Britain, she said, is far too powerful and important a power to be intimidated. Rather, she called for a new ‘strategic partnership’ between the EU and Britain to the post-Brexit benefit of all.

The speech was not risk free. May could only have made such a speech because of three factors that have changed Britain’s strategic landscape since Brexit. First, the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States means London suddenly has a powerful new ally in its Brexit negotiations. Second, in spite of dire warnings from economists (bloody useless economists) Britain had the fastest growing economy of all the G7 countries last year. Third, the strategic challenges Europe must face together mean it would be utter folly to alienate Britain, free Europe’s strongest intelligence, security and defence actor. As May said, “Britain is leaving the EU, but not leaving Europe”.

So, all well and good? Yes, but. It is high time Prime Minister May showed the leadership she showed yesterday and inject some much needed clarity into the post-Brexit torpor. And yes, she reminded fellow Europeans that given Britain’s huge trade deficit with the rest of the EU, and the access to global capital markets London affords, Europe needs Britain as much as Britain needs Europe (as it does).

May must be both resolute and careful at one and same time. Britain’s new ‘special relationship’ with President Trump will come at a price. Forget all the legalistic nonsense about Britain not being able to do a new trade deal with the Americans until after Britain has left the EU. Much of that deal can be in place well before Britain leaves, especially if President Trump decides unilaterally and informally to treat Britain’s goods and services preferentially. Equally, there is also much over which London disagrees with the Trump administration. Take NATO. Trump wants it to focus on counter-terrorism and not Russia, something Britain cannot and must not accept.

Another challenge will come from the Scottish Nationalists (SNP), which May must face down. SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon wakes up every morning with only one thought on her mind; the destruction of the United Kingdom. Whether it be the EU or some other issue over which she can feign offence Sturgeon will do all she can to achieve her goal, because it is her only goal. May needs to point out forcefully and publicly to Sturgeon the hypocrisy of her position. The latter legitimised the UK-wide EU referendum by campaigning in it. By so doing she also legitimised the UK-wide result.

However, the main barrier to the realisation of May’s Global Britain vision is not in Brussels, Edinburgh, or Washington, it is in London.  It has been fascinating to me how parts of Whitehall (not all) have raised roadblocks in the way of implementing Brexit. Almost all of those roadblocks have been procedural, i.e. about Britain’s inability to manage the process of Brexit. That speaks volumes about Whitehall. The key to yesterday’s speech was that it focused on power not process. This is because Britain’s future relationship with the EU will be decided by power not process. Having surrendered so much power to Brussels over the past forty or so years, Whitehall does not any longer understand power, its generation or its application. It will need to re-learn quickly.

Yes, Brexit will be complicated and yes, if May is to realise her vision she is going to have to begin the patient process of rebuilding all the competences a state needs to be ‘independent’. That ‘process’ will indeed take time. However, for Global Britain to be more than yet another empty British prime ministerial rhetorical flourish that is precisely the challenge May laid down to the British elite yesterday.

This morning President Juncker of the European Commission will respond to May’s speech. The Brexit phoney war is indeed over. “Go ahead, make my day…but can we please be friends afterwards?”

Julian Lindley-French