NATO: Fort Trump? Try ARRC Poland

“The [NATO military] strategy will guide Allied military decision-making and provide NATO’s Military Authorities with a definitive policy reference, enabling us to deliver our core mission – defending almost 1 billion people”.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Stuart Peach, Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, 22 May 2019

2 July 2019

NATO’s Ten Day Nightmare

At the core of NATO’s many challenges is a refusal by many of the Allies to consider the worst-case. NATO’s nightmare is a Russian war plan that fits all-too neatly into NATO’s defence plan, or what passes for one given there is no actual standing defence plan. Put simply, the Russians could well have achieved their ‘limited’ war aims in the Baltic States and stopped by the time the bulk of NATO forces begin to move. NATO would re-discover all too quickly von Moltke’s old dictum that all plans collapse on contact with the enemy. In such circumstances, there would be little or no time to rotate forces and resources through some neatly conceived campaign plan.  They would be faced, instead, with a Russian fait accompli in the Baltic States (or indeed elsewhere), and with it a very profound question; are NATO Europeans willing to go to war with Russia to rescue their allies? If they did, they would do so knowing all too well the risk of nuclear war. If they did not, NATO would be dead.

Last Monday, I went to Szczecin in Poland to visit Headquarters, Multinational Corps Northeast (MNC NE) to brief the impressive Lieutenant-General Slawomir Wojchiechowski, together wih senior NATO commanders, on my assessment of the strategic situation in the Baltic Sea Region.  On Wednesday, I went in to Tartu, Estonia, close to the Russian border, to address an important event on hybrid warfare and grey zone operations, which was co-hosted by the Baltic Defence College and Washington’s National Defense University, of which I have the honour to be a Distinguished Fellow. This extended think/do piece is both my assessment of the week and my recommendations.

My message? The ‘correlation of forces’ between Russian forces in Moscow’s Western Military District, and those on NATO’s Eastern Flank, is dangerously out of balance. It is an imbalance that is exacerbated by a lack of joined-upness between Allied governments, a lack of cohesion between NATO headquarters, and a critical lack of forces and resources that would be available to NATO commanders in an emergency.

Deterring means defending

If NATO cannot defend, it cannot deter. That to me is the implicit message in NATO’s new military strategy which is good, as far as it goes. However, growing world-wide pressures on US forces, allied to severe limitations on the capabilities and capacities of NATO’s European forces, mean the strategy is simply unable ease the profound and growing tensions that exist between the ends, ways and means of NATO’s Strategic Concept – the real one, not the out-of-date published one.  It also falls far short of the strategic ambition needed to provide a credible deterrent and defence posture around 360 degrees of threat because NATO forces lack both the weight of arms and speed of response upon which credible deterrence stands. Critically, the strategy fails to adequately close NATO’s two critical and dangerous deterrence gaps. First, between NATO’s conventional and nuclear deterrents, and, second, between NATO’s forward deployed forces and the bulk of the national forces the Alliance would need to call upon in an emergency.  Quality, heavy, rapidly-deployable forces are the Achilles’ heel of the NATO command and force structures. Critically, those that do exist are simply too slow, too few in number, subject to too many national caveats, or too distant to meet an attack by Russia that General Gerasimov and his Staff spend much of their time planning.  It is a crisis, for that is what it is, that would be made far worse if the Allies faced simultaneous crises on multiple fronts, as could well be the reality. What to do?

The facts speak for themselves. In the Baltic States there are four brigades with no tanks, combat aircraft and little artillery and air defence, reinforced by one multinational NATO battlegroup in each of the Baltic States designed to act as a ‘trip wire’ force in the event of a Russian attack. Trip-wire to what?

On the other side of the Estonian-Russian border, close to where I was speaking last week, the Russian Order of Battle includes the 1^st Guards Tank Army, 6^th and 20^th Combined Arms Armies, 11^th Army Corps in Kaliningrad, 3 airborne divisions, 3 Spetsnaz Special Forces Brigades, 10 rocket and artillery brigades and 30 tank/motor rifle brigades/regiments plus one naval infantry brigade. There are also significant Russian air and naval assets in the region, all of which are reinforced by Russia’s short-range, theatre and strategic nuclear forces.

In other words, Russian forces enjoy such local, and possibly regional-strategic superiority that NATO deterrence is close to being a dangerous bluff. New military strategy or no, at their current level of readiness the bulk of NATO forces would take months to assemble. Critically, in a war, vital US reinforcements will need to cross a contested Atlantic and land at vulnerable Bremerhaven, whilst military mobility across Europe will remain severely compromised for the foreseeable future.  

Complex strategic coercion: adapting to what?

If the credibility of NATO deterrence is to be reinforced, and quickly, existing forces and command resources need to be used far more effectively and efficiently across the entire 360 degree bandwidth of complex strategic coercion. That imperative places particular importance on NATO’s force hub in Germany and Poland, around which NATO pivots. This space is vital both for the defence of the Eastern Flank and the Baltic Sea Region, as well as for reinforcing support for Allies in south-east and southern Europe.

At the 2018 Brussels Summit NATO took some steps to ‘adapt’ the Alliance to meet that 360 degree challenge posed by an array of evolving and dynamic threats, and thus ease the deterrence and defence dilemma with which NATO forces must contend. The modernisation of Alliance collective defence will be reinforced with the so-called 4x30 initiative.  Efforts will also be made to enhance and improve military mobility in an emergency, much of the work to be done in conjunction with the EU. The NATO Command Structure and Force Structure are in the process of being reinforced and modernised, with a new Atlantic Command and the German-led Joint Support and Enabling Command (JSEC) being stood up. The Alliance is also moving to strengthened defences against irregular threats with the establishment of a Cyberspace Operations Centre and Counter Hybrid Support Teams.

For all that I remain deeply concerned and sceptical. NATO’s collective defences are extremely brittle and could well crack in the face of a determined enemy. My specific concerns focus on the NATO command structure, the location of key commands and the cohesion between them, as well as the false assumptions underpinning policy and planning about the nature of future conflict, and how it would impact upon Alliance forces.

Take Multinational Corps Northeast as an example. It is NATO’s ‘unblinking eye’ on NATO’s Eastern Flank, and thus central to Alliance deterrence and defence.  From my observations, MNC NE is doing all in its power to meet a central challenge to the Alliance that would be more realistic if its Area of Responsibility (AOR) was re-christened NATO’s Eastern Front, although that may resonate too eloquently with history. In any case, HQ MNC NE would be at the core of any organised NATO response to a Russian attack on the Baltic States.

Unfortunately, the constraints on MNC NE typify the ends, ways and means crisis faced by the Alliance as a whole.  It has no authority to co-ordinate between the separate forces of the three Baltic States in the event of an attack, even though it would provide command and control for Baltic ground forces and act as a Baltic Corps HQ with NATO-trained, Baltic commanders and staff officers. MNC NE would also be pivotal for organising the reception, staging and onward movement of reinforcing NATO forces into Poland, whilst also acting as a corps-level HQ to command Polish forces that would be critical in any emergency.  And yet, Szczecin is some 900km from the Lithuanian border!  

Move the ARRC to Poland

What is needed is a reinforced heavy command hub in NATO’s German-Poland pivot space that could respond to emergencies in strength across the full bandwidth of Alliance contingencies. A cluster of mutually-reinforcing, hardened, deployable headquarters able to shift their respective centres of gravity in support of each other to meet all and any emergency.  

The Poles are acutely aware that they sit not only in the midst of NATO’s pivotal space, but also in the middle of NATO’s deterrence gaps, which is why there have been calls from Warsaw for American forces to be stationed in Poland, at what President Duda rather mischievously dubbed Fort Trump. This would be a mistake. The Americans need their German command and logistics hub, as well as their vital strategic relationship with the Bundeswehr, to provide the hard core foundation of any reinforced defence should the need arise. It would be better to leave US forces permanently-stationed in Germany.

Solution? Move the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC) from sleepy Gloucestershire in the UK, where it is currently based, to Poland, possibly supported by a US Army corps.  There would be a range of benefits from such a redeployment:

 

1. The ARRC could provide the command backbone for a new mobile heavy force that would see a much upgraded enhanced NATO Response Force evolve into a twenty-first century Allied Command Europe Heavy Mobile Force.  Such a force would be a true 360 degree force and would work closely with and in an emergency reinforce, MNC NE and MND NE.

2. NATO planning is built on the premise that its nine deployable corps headquarters would rotate command during an extended emergency. In fact, there is every possibility that an emergency would be far from ‘extended’. What is needed is to prevent such a crisis from happening in the first place. Moving the ARRC to Poland would send a strong message of reinforced deterrence and enable MNC NE to retain its ‘unblinking eye’ on the defence of the Baltic Sea Region.

3. The deployment of the ARRC to Poland would improve interoperability between the respective headquarters and promote mutual mentoring. The deployment of the ARRC to Poland would thus not only create a much heavier command and response cluster centred on Poland, it could also help establish a new NATO standard for command cohesion and interoperability through a series of pan-command, ‘test to fail’ development exercises.

4. Moving the ARRC to Poland would help to break down command barriers between the nations. For all NATO’s on-paper cohesion each deployable headquarters is very much a national (and/or separate entity) over which the two Joint Force Commands have at best nominal control.  There is also a lot of petty jealousy between the headquarters. The ARRC is a case in point. It emerged from the old British I Corps and was withdrawn (ridiculously) from Rheindahlen in Germany in 2010, when Britain stopped being a power and became a balance-sheet. It also has a reputation amongst the other corps headquarters of being arrogant and stand-offish. Deploying the ARRC to Poland with the support of US forces in Germany would help reduce such perceptions.

5. The deployment of the ARRC to Poland would show that America’s European allies are willing to solve Alliance problems and share the necessary burdens with the US needed to make the new NATO military strategy credible. It would also demonstrate that the Allies were conscious of the growing global responsibilities of US forces, and the growing pressures they are under.

6. In the wake of the Brexit mess a decision by London to offer the ARRC for such a role would go far beyond the current work Britain is doing with the Joint Expeditionary Force. It would send a strong political signal that Britain remains firmly committed to the defence of continental Europe and is not going to withdraw behind its nuclear shield.  A signal that would be further strengthened if the new British prime minister offered more British forces in support of the deployment.   

7. The deployment of the ARRC to Poland, together with (inter alia) the Eurocorps, the German-Netherlands Corps, and NRDC-Italy, could also help establish an active framework for the development of high-end, US-friendly European intervention forces. As such, the deployment would be in line with President Macron’s European Intervention Initiative and an extension of the Franco-British Combined Joint Expeditionary Force. In so doing, it would help promote a European force development hub centred on France, Germany, Poland and the UK.

 

Fort Trump? Try ARRC Poland

Some will no doubt suggest that such a forward deployment of the ARRC would make it vulnerable to a Russian first strike.  Such a threat is real, be it in Poland or Gloucestershire. However, whilst deploying the ARRC to Poland would not completely close the deterrence gaps, it would immediately add weight, speed and credibility to NATO’s deterrence, NATO agility, and NATO responsiveness across the collective defence, crisis management and cooperative security missions. Critically, it would reinforce the mission and credibility of the Alliance’s forward deployed forces in the Baltic States and Poland by establishing a more credible graduated response to threats across the conflict spectrum. Above all, it would complicate the thinking of Russia’s General Gerasimov, as well as his experienced and able Staff, by reinforcing NATO’s spine in the critical strategic space in Poland. At present, President Putin and General Gerasimov believe NATO’s Eastern and South-Eastern Flanks enjoy peace at their discretion.

    

Of course, the deployment of the ARRC to Poland would not compensate for a lack of sufficiently robust European forces, armed with sufficient weight and agility, upon which credible deterrence really rests. To solve that conundrum NATO’s Europeans need to wake up to the new reality of the contemporary and future transatlantic relationship.  The Americans will only be able to assure the security and defence of Europe if Europeans do an awful lot more deterring and defending themselves. In other words, and for the sake of NATO and Europe’s citizens, European leaders must finally stop talking defence and start doing it! Deploying the ARRC to Poland would be an important first step up that particular road.

Julian Lindley-French        

    

Anglo Nostalgia?

“Brexit cannot guarantee a promising return to a post-imperial nation-state partly because the balance of power has shifted (in favour of non-European and non-Western powers), structurally weakening Western democracies in front of authoritarian powers. And yet, a nostalgic view of Britain has been crucial to the Brexit debate, and will not quickly disappear, leaving the United Kingdom more internally divided than in recent history. The dream of a “Global Britain” has a great deal in com­mon with the historical concept of “Greater Britain”—in this sense it is indeed nostalgic and grounded in an idealised past. But it actually rests on the legacy of a “Little England” that is a little too specifically English”.

Anglo Nostalgia – The Politics of Emotion in a Fractured West?

Dante’s Britain?

Alphen, Netherlands. 13 June. Abandon all hope ye who enter here? That was the impression I gained from reading a new, hard-hitting book by Edoardo Campanella and Marta Dassu entitled Anglo Nostalgia – The Politics of Emotion in a Fractured West? (London: Hurst). In fact, the book may well have been entitled, Anglo Nostalgia – A Warning to Italians. Still, this is an important book, and an excellent read, because it has the courage to consider the structural implications of Brexit for Europe head on. This is hardly surprising as one of the authors, Marta Dassu, I have known, liked and admired for many years. Still, rather than me eulogise the work, you can make up your own mind and I would encourage you to do that, let me challenge some of the fundamental assumptions at the books core. The picture it paints of my country, Britain and the Brexit mess, as well as that of the US and President Trump’s America First, is one that I only partially recognise.

The most important message of the book for the British, or more specifically ‘we’ English, is that we should recognise that we are little different from, say, Italy, or any other European nation, and invest what fading power ‘we’ have left in a “hybrid Europe”. Britain’s latent strategic ambition is pretence born of a form of myth-based patriotism/nationalism and archaic identity. Worse, it is dangerous nostalgia that prolongs the fantasy that Britain can somehow act as a bridge between America and Europe.

Therefore, it was perhaps fitting that I read the book on various planes bouncing around Europe in the run up to the D-Day 75 commemorations.  The book is certainly eloquent and compelling concerning Brexit, particularly the danger posed by ‘buy one, get one free’ populists offering simplistic solutions to complex problems. The discussion about the role myth plays, and has played in the British national story is powerful. For much of my career as both historian and analyst I have fought a battle between head and heart over what role in the world post-imperial Britain should aspire to, and what hard realities Britain needs to face.  It is precisely because I am both historian and analyst that it is a battle I think I have by and large won, without having to abandon my deep-seated and, I hope, moderate British patriotism.

Patriotism or nostalgia?

My problem with this book is that there is no place for even my idea of patriotism, which the book suggests is part of some “epidemic of nostalgia”. Rather, I must accept that Little Britain abandon all and any pretence to strategic ambition for that is the only hope there is of eventually making the EU work in a globalized world in which ‘one size fits all’ European states count for little and, by extension, the European citizen even less. This smacks not only of a denial of identity, but also a form of defeatism and that the only way for Europeans to counter big, inefficient political blobs like China is to create yet another big, inefficient political blob called ‘Europe’.

Central to the book is a particularly scathing view of hard-line Brexiteers, and what it sees as their nostalgic fantasies about the rebuilding of the British Empire, or something such like. First, it seems to confuse Brexiteers at times with all mainstream Brits. Second, in my many debates with Brexiteers I have yet to come across anyone who harbours such illusions of Empire reborn. Rather, the main impulse for most Brexiteers I engage with is both the scale and scope of mass immigration and/or concerns about who really governs us and the degree to which people are accountable to any electorate. There is a particular concern, given the direction of travel of the European Project about who or what will govern ‘us’ thirty years hence if Britain remains in the EU. Brexit is also as much about Britain as ‘Europe’ with many Brexiteers simply frustrated with a political mainstream that seems unwilling and/or unable to address the very big issues of change with anything approaching competence.

A central and strong argument of the book is that no single state, let alone European state, can alone deal with many of these big issues. This is undoubtedly correct. However, the book would have been strengthened if it had tried harder to understand Brexit and posed the question all Europeans need to consider: to what extent must European states constrain/pool sovereign action in the name of the collective, possibly common good, action, given that any such ‘action’, by definition, weakens influence over policy and the accountability of power to the people.

Much of the Brexit insurgency, for that is what it is, has more to do with the ever-weakening relationship between voting and power in Europe’s fading democracy, than nostalgic concerns for some long-lost glorious past. Where I disagree with the book is when it suggests that what it sees as specifically English nostalgia for a return to what it calls “pure sovereignty”. In fact, much of the Brexit angst is simply a cri de Coeur for democracy to matter, and even a Remainer like me harbours those concerns, which is hardly nostalgia.

Pure sovereignty

This apparent English desire for a return to “pure sovereignty” suggests a lack of understanding of English political philosophy and culture.  First, if there is a nostalgic aspect to Brexit it has little to do with Empire of which most Britons today under the age of fifty have only the faintest memory. This is not least because ‘history’, as I know it, is no longer taught in schools. If Brexit has any roots it is in the political philosophy that emerged in the seventeenth century with Hobbes, and evolved through Hume, Burke and Mill. The English civil war was essentially about the nature of the relationship between power and people in a “Commonwealth”. The English have long been suspicious of distant ‘we know best’ Leviathans, be they rigid Stuart kings or suave Eurocrats. England’s civil war in time gave birth to modern liberal democracy because it set limits on monarchy and, as such, its creed was also evident in the ‘no taxation without representation’ nature of the American Revolution over a century later. It is an explanatory historical link the book fails to exploit.

The book also fails to properly understand the impact ‘hybrid Europe’ has had on the hybrid political artifice that is the United Kingdom. The UK was, in effect, born in 1707 of a strategic, imperial narrative that emphasised a certain ‘national’ myth to hold Britain together by creating a story beyond English hegemony. It is the retreat from that narrative/myth that was implicit in Empire, allied to EU membership that has helped to loosen the ties between the peoples of Britain and which now renders the future of NATO open to question. The emergence of Brussels as an alternative pole of power has weakened all of Europe’s composite states.

The UK-US ‘special relationship’ is also painted by the book as one of ‘co-operative nostalgia’, which will fail on the rocks of America First.  For me, this was one of the least convincing analyses in the book because it presents the still important relationship between America and Britain as the strategic equivalent of those two old Muppet characters, Waldorf and Stadler, who sit in the stalls of the theatre criticizing the work of others whilst longing for the good old days. As I see myself on a regular basis, the UK-US relationship remains that of two modern, powerful states, admittedly one far more powerful than the other, which operates to effect both in public and far beyond, and which continues to be the core relationship upon which the defence of Europe and NATO is established.

  

Little, Ordinary, Britain

It is the central thesis of the book that is most worthy of challenge. To the authors Britain is simply another ‘ordinary’ European state, like Italy, and for its own good, and that of ‘Europe’, must accept its ordinariness. Whilst I am very comfortable, as a European with the European bit, I am less convinced about Britain being simply another, ‘ordinary’ European state. All European states are distinct but Britain, along with France and Germany, are not as ‘ordinary’ as many other European states. Britain remains larger and far more powerful than most other European states, and I can say that without any delusions of post-imperial grandeur. It is plain fact. States remain the essential building blocks of international relations, including European states. States must also compete and to compete successfully they must constantly tell themselves a story, about themselves and to and for themselves. It was ever thus. This is not nostalgia, it is an essential part of identity which is precisely what the EU lacks, and which is the main reason Project Europe has stalled.

The simple reality is that Britain today is an important regional power with the second or third largest economy in Europe (depending on the exchange rate on any given day), with one of Europe’s more capable armed forces. Britain still has weight if not the weight it had 150 years ago, and most Britons of all stripes are entirely comfortable with that. ‘Europe’, hybrid or the full Espresso, will not be built if all Europeans are forced to prostrate themselves before the ‘reality’ of their own weakness by exaggerating that relative weakness. This is simply wrong about the nature of power in the twenty-first century world. For the EU to work it must aggregate the power of its member-states, celebrate them, and encourage them all to be all that they can be, not force them into a single strait-jacket for the sake of the political convenience of Brussels marked ‘historical has-beens’.

It is also a vision built on a false set of assumptions. First, it implies that the likes of China, and much of the rest of Asia, will rise inexorably. This reveals a misunderstanding about China and Asia, and the many internal contradictions therein. Second, it suggests that a relative rebalancing of American power is a mark of American decline. And, that even the vital strategic ambition of the United States, upon which Europe relies for its freedom, is little more than some form of America First nostalgia that exaggerates the American sense of self-importance, and thus America’s role in the world.

Little Britain or Little Europe?

For all of the above this is still an important book, and I heartily recommend it to you. Power, narrative and identity DO co-exist and CAN all too easily tip over into nostalgia. That Britain is particularly vulnerable to such nostalgia is a fair point for the book to make. As is the argument that elements of nostalgia are clearly present in the Brexit (and the America First) debate. That Britain and the British (the differentiation in the book between the English and the other four nations that make up the UK – Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and…London, is far too simplistic) might at times come across as arrogant, nostalgic and mired in the past is a legitimate observation for the book to make because that is how many fellow Europeans see us. Europeans who also now see a Britain humbled before its own Brexit hubris, even if I rarely detect much schadenfreude about that.

 

However, what the book calls ‘nostalgia’ is too often confused with a latent and legitimate sense of British strategic ambition that is, with respect, lost to many Italians with their very different set of national myths. It is strategic ambition that is, by and large, shared with France and which will be essential if ‘Europe’ is ever to be a global actor rather than a defensive European bunch of pathetic patries lost pathetically in the pathos and myths of their respective vainglorious pasts. Critically, it is strategic ambition that mercantilist Germany does not share, which perhaps explains more about Little Europe’s little place in a big world than power fantasist Little Britons.

However, the book should be careful for what it wishes. Had it not been for ‘Anglo Saxon’ strategic conceits it would have been unlikely that Italy, or the rest of Western Europe, would have been freed from the Fascism of Mussolini, or the Nazism of Hitler, and protected from the Stalinism of the Soviet Union. It is unlikely if left to Continental Europeans, that the Cold War would have been fought with such authority with an America and supportive Britain at the core of the dozen or so democracies that fought it. Those thousands of Britons who died liberating Italy, or were mown down storming the Normandy beaches, or cut down struggling through the entanglements of its bocage, seventy-five years ago, were no doubt armed in part by what the book calls Anglo Nostalgia. It is just as well they were!

Julian Lindley-French         

D-Day: The Forging of an Alliance

“Once more a supreme test has to be faced. This time the challenge is not to fight to survive, but to fight to win the final victory for the good cause. Once again what is demanded of us all is something more than courage, more than endurance. We need the revival of spirit, the new unconquerable resolve”.

His Majesty King George VI, 6 June 1944

D-Day.

6 June. D plus 75 years. At 20 minutes past midnight on 6 June 1944 Lieutenant Herbert Denham (Den) Brotheridge, Commander, 25 Platoon, 2^nd Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry became the first Allied soldier to give his life on D-Day as he stormed a German machine-gun nest at Pegasus Bridge.

As I write this, 75 years ago British, American and Canadian forces were storming ashore along a 50 mile/80 kilometre front on the five landing beaches of Normandy – Gold, Juno, Sword, Omaha and Utah. ‘D-Day’ was a true effort of alliance with men taking part from Australia, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland and, of course, France.  Others were also present. Much has been made this year about the 70^th anniversary of NATO. Much of the alliance that was to become the Alliance was forged on those five historic Norman beaches.

D-Day was also the high-water mark of British strategic influence and military strike power. Contrary to much of the theatre that has ensued ever since D-Day, Operation Overlord was primarily a British-led operation and success. Whilst US General Dwight D. Eisenhower was Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, all of his operational commanders were British. The Deputy Supreme Allied Commander was Air Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, Royal Air Force. Commander-in-Chief Air was Air Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh Mallory, Commander-in-Chief Sea was Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsey, whilst Commander-in-Chief Land (21^st Army Group) was Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery. The operational plan was British as was the air campaign to isolate Normandy from German reinforcements (Operation Transportation), as well as the massive deception campaign (Operation Bodyguard) that convinced the Nazis that the real objective for any invasion force would be the Pas de Calais.

Of the 156,000 troops that were landed on D-Day 73,000 were American, whilst 83,115 were under British command, of which 61,715 were British and some 21,000 were Canadian.   Of the 1213 principal warships supporting the landings 892 were Royal Navy ships, whilst the British supplied 3261 of the 4126 landing craft deployed, with only 200 US craft present, mainly due to pressures in the Pacific theatre.  In the air, 70% of the almost 12000 aircraft that took part were either Royal Air Force or Royal Canadian Air Force.  

D-day was also a triumph of British innovation.  Without the two giant floating Mulberry Harbours the campaign to free north-west Europe simply would not have been possible. The British also successfully deployed-in-strength specially-adapted tanks, known as Hobart’s Funnies, which helped clear a path for the invading British and Canadian troops. American commanders had, for a range of reasons, eschewed the use of such innovation. British Airborne Forces and Special Forces were particularly effective, with the famous and vital midnight glider assault on Pegasus Bridge by Den Brotheridge and his colleagues merely the most celebrated.

These facts in no way underplay the US contribution to D-Day. The two US beaches Omaha and Utah were tough nuts to crack and, together with their Airborne colleagues, US forces demonstrated American valour and courage that Day of the highest order. It is what happens after D-Day that truly shines a light on the American future and begins a story of American power and leadership that has secured freedom in Europe ever since.  From D+1 the Americans pour men and materiel into the fight for Normandy on a scale that was unimaginable for their war-tired British ally. By June 1944, the British are beginning to reach the limits of their manpower and industrial capacity, whilst the Americans are only just beginning to exploit their own such capacity, in spite of fighting two major wars simultaneously in the Pacific and Europe.

   

Churchill had once said of Montgomery’s 1942 victory over Rommel at El Alamein that, whilst it was most certainly not the beginning of the end, it was, perhaps, the end of the beginning. With Soviet forces sweeping in from the east D-Day was clearly the beginning of the end for Hitler. 

D-Day: the forging of an alliance

Something else takes place on D-Day: the building of foundations for a multinational alliance of democracies. Take the Dutch. The number of Dutch personnel at D-Day itself was relatively modest, with many of those who had escaped to Britain in 1940 on the fall of The Netherlands (the so-called ‘Engelandvaarders’) embedded in British forces.  However, on August 6 1944, the 2000-strong Royal Netherlands Motorised Infantry Brigade (Prinses Irene Brigade) landed at Graye-sur-Mer in Normandy. First under Canadian command, and then under the command of General Dempsey’s 2^nd British Army, the Dutch fought their way from Normandy back to their homeland, joined in the liberation of Tilburg in October 1944 alongside their British allies, before entering The Hague in triumph at the very end of the war, on 9 May 1945.

The essential success of D-Day was precisely because it was a team effort, forged from an alliance that, in time, forged THE Alliance of today. Very different and differing cultures and personalities (Montgomery and Patton!!!!) learned to work together for the common good under by and large enlightened American leadership. it was that team effort, and the shared culture it created, that lay the foundation for the creation of NATO in April 1949.  What made it a success was not just American power, or the immense investment of brains, men and material by the British and Canadians, but the shared sense of mission, as burdens and risks were shared on that Day in pursuit of a cause that was the very antithesis of nationalism. Above all, D-Day saw a force of, and for, democracy and liberty land on those beaches. A force, that by its very democratic nature also enabled in time former enemies – Italy first, and then the Federal Republic of Germany – to join the Alliance once they had been freed from Fascism and Nazism.

Action this Day!

Today, the lessons afforded us by the great citizen armies of Tommies, GIs, Canucks et al that  battled so bravely to gain those first, fledgling footholds on the sweeping, machine-gunned, machine-mortared sands of Normandy 75 years ago are no less poignant. If we do not wish to put our young men, and increasingly women, through the horrors of some twenty-first century D-Day (a digital D-Day or DD-Day?) somewhere, sometime, then our leaders must stop appeasing the dangerous reality of today and face down together latter day destroyers of democracy and would-be slayers of freedom.

To mark D-Day, British Prime Minister Theresa May led the leaders of Allied and Partner nations in the signing of a D-Day Proclamation. It called on the Free World to again find common cause in the face of new challenges to democracy and stability. Words are not enough. Action this day is needed.

This week I was on a US-German military base in deepest Bavaria attending a meeting of the Loisach Group, co-organised by the Munich Security Conference and the George C. Marshall Center. The Group’s mission is to consider the forging of a renewed, deep, twenty-first century strategic freedom partnership between the US and Germany.  The eloquence of this week’s history was loud and clear at the meeting and rang in my ears. It led me, a proud and patriotic Briton, to tell senior Americans and Germans to get their act together and build a Special Relationship between Americans and Germans. It is precisely because of D-Day we need Americans and Germans to help lead our great community of freedom together if peace is to be preserved. No more pretence, no more petty shortsightedness. Britain? In spite of my country’s many current challenges Britain will be there…as always.

The irony of the Loisach Group mission was thus made stark by memories of D-Day. Much of the effort to preserve freedom in this century will depend not only (and again) on American leadership. It will demand of all Europeans the collective strategic vision and fortitude that has been so lacking these thirty years past. Such European leadership will only come if, as King George VI suggested, we can find ‘endurance that is more than courage’. It is leadership that also calls upon modern, legitimate, democratic Germany to be at the beating heart of freedom and its defence. Free Germany must now show its commitment to freedom’s cause by sharpening its swords, as well as its many ploughs.  It is time.  

In honour of a very special Band of Brothers

This blog is dedicated to Lieutenant Den Brotheridge and the brave men of many nations who on D-Day began the long march to a free Europe which continues to this day. In particular, I honour and salute the 6603 Americans, 2700 Britons and 946 Canadians and others who watched the sun rise on D-Day, but not its setting. Not only did they forge a path to freedom, they forged on the anvil of unity an enduring Alliance that must be preserved, both in their name and our own.

Therefore, let those of us to whom our Fallen gave this precious gift of freedom not squander it through inadequacy and indifference. A freedom that I am exercising right here, right now in my freely-expressed thought. A freedom which could so easily be lost if we dishonour the sacrifice and memory of brave men through ignorance and wilful weakness.

 

D-Day: the forging of THE Alliance.

Julian Lindley-French            

(Not) Figuring out the Future of Europe’s Defence

On the up?

Alphen, Netherlands. 31 May. Europeans will not start really fearing what they should fear in the wider world, until they stop secretly fearing each other.  Consequently, deep down they cannot decide if they want to empower other Europeans or enfeeble them. That is why real European defence remains still-born, why Europeans have become cheap defence junkies, and why Europeans continue to ask Americans to defend them from the world and each other.

   

The trigger for that opening statement was a piece I read on a plane to Rome this week to address the Conference of Commandants of Alliance defence academies hosted by the NATO Defence College and the Italian Centre for High Defence Studies (CASD). Entitled “On the up: Western defence spending in 2018”, published by IISS, and written by Canadian academic Lucie Beraud-Sudreau, the piece endeavoured to apply some ‘science’ to the problem of defence expenditure by Europeans. However, there was also a political message; that Europeans do spend a lot on defence and that American claims to bear too high a burden for the defence of Europe are misplaced.

The theme of the piece is established early. “After years of reduced spending after the end of the Cold War and in the wake of the financial crisis, NATO’s European members increased their defence budgets by 4.2% in real terms in 2018”. It goes on: “Their [NATO Europeans] total spending would – if the aggregated figure of US$264bn were considered on its own – amount to the second largest defence budget in the world”. The crunch sentence is thus: “…given Washington’s other global commitments, attributing to European defence the entirety of the US commitment would…seem to overstate the US commitment [to European defence JLF]”.  So, Europeans DO spend a lot on their own defence, possibly enough, and the Americans overstate their commitment to the defence of Europe. According to the piece all that is needed now is for Europeans to spend what they spend a bit more efficiently (common defence?) and more cooperatively.

   

Europe’s no pies in the sky defence

Now, I have been reading this stuff for decades. Of its kind this is not one of the bigger ‘pie in the sky’ pieces on European defence that I have read. It is well-written, well-researched, well-argued, and just plain wrong. It makes the mistake many such ‘Europeans ARE spending enough but not well enough’ pieces make by failing to address WHY Europeans still refuse to spend better, what defence outcomes Europeans should collectively aspire to, and just how much defending themselves without the Americans would cost. With regard to the latter, forget NATO’s 2% GDP Defence Investment Pledge, a truly autonomous European defence investment pledge would require at least each state to spend 4% GDP per annum on defence, probably more, with much of that funding ‘sunk’ into a central European defence fund. Only then could Europeans hope to replace the high-end forces and resources which the Americans bring to bear and which are the true granite of Europe’s defence, and the rock upon which deterrence stands.

So, why do Europeans refuse to pool their resources after decades of empty European defence rhetoric? There is at least one equation that must be understood if one is to grasp the ghastly politics of European defence: the more money promised the smaller the force becomes whilst conversely the smaller the force the more tasks assigned to whilst the number of acronyms (‘new’ forces) created to carry out such tasks expand exponentially.  In other words, European defence remains an essentially political project rather than a serious defence.

The hard truth is that Europeans still do not trust each other enough to pool sufficient forces and resources to become “more efficient and cooperative”. For many of European countries their armed forces are intrinsically tied-up with their sense of national identity. They also act as sources of labour represented by vested political interests that have real clout in many European countries. Europeans also suffer from their own version of ‘pork barrel politics’ with defence industries not only strongly-represented in the political class, but also a vital source of employment often in swing parliamentary constituencies. That latter imperative is why Britain’s two enormous and hugely-expensive new aircraft carriers really got built. It is also the reason why the fielding times and project costs of so much new European defence equipment is so often lamentable, bordering on the criminal.

What to do?

The piece is at its weakest when it implies that a direct comparison of the annual cost to the Americans for the defence of the Alliance with European defence outlays is the true test of burden-sharing. Yes, the Americans may have forces spread the world-over but those forces also have the strategic enablers across air, sea, land, cyber, space, information and knowledge which Europeans, by and large, lack. Strategic enablers without which most forward deployed European forces would simply be sausage-meat in the making in any war. Strategic enablers that the Americans routinely make available to Europeans through the Alliance and which many Europeans too often now take for granted.

Here’s the twist: only in the extreme event of a new high-end world war could one envisage the Americans being forced to deny Europeans such support. Yes, as the piece states, European defence expenditure is “…equivalent of 1.5 times China’s official [note ‘official’ JLF] budget (US$168bn), and almost four times Russia’s estimated total military expenditure (US$63bn)…” And yet, there is no serious comparison to be made between Europe’s generated defence outcomes and those of contemporary China and Russia.

Given that stark reality the piece would have been immeasurably stronger if the essentially defence economic argument had been balanced and reinforced with the sage words of General Mark Milley in his May 2018 testimony to the US Congress.  Milley stated, “I’ve seen comparative numbers of US defense budget versus China, US defense budget versus Russia. What is not often commented on is the cost of labor. We’re the best paid military in the world by a long shot. The cost of Russian soldiers or Chinese soldiers is a tiny fraction”.  Milley then went on to suggest that if one strips out the relative high cost of US labour the defence outcomes China and Russia generate are dangerously close to those generated by the US.

Critically, Chinese and Russia defence outcomes in the scope and mass of forces they generate are way beyond any forces Europeans can aspire to simply because there is no, and there can be no comparison between the bang for the buck America, China and Russia generate, and the squeak for the buck Europeans generate. And, for all the rhetoric to the contrary, there is little sign that Europe’s defence squeak is going to get any louder any time soon.

Beraud-Sudreau is essentially correct when she suggests Europeans SHOULD spend more effectively and cooperatively. Sadly, there is little chance they will. What she can expect are yet more ‘big’ announcements, and even ‘bigger’ European claims about not an awful lot. European defence is the mouse that squeaked, and it was ever thus.

Julian Lindley-French  

               

   

Chinese Europe: Belt, Road and Chains?

“In proposing the Belt and Road Initiative, the aim is to carry forward the spirit of the ancient Silk Road by combining the dream of Chinese people with that of people living in countries involved in the initiative…”

President Xi Jingping

US defence/Chinese money?

Alphen, Netherlands. 22 May. Can Europe rely on the US for its strategic security and defence, and China for infrastructure investment? It is a timely question because yesterday Huawei launched its new mobile phone in London. It was also the implicit question at this past weekend’s excellent Lennart Meri Conference in Tallinn, Estonia which I had the honour to attend.  Naturally, given its location, much of the debate was focussed on the threat posed by Russia to the Baltic States. There was another strategic elephant in the room – China. More specifically, the strategic implications of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Much of my work at present is focussed on elaborating my concept of complex strategic coercion and 5D warfare, the sustained and systematic application of deception, disinformation, destabilisation, disruption and implied destruction by Russia at the margins of NATO and the EU, and between the seams of Europe’s increasingly complex societies. After listening to the debates in Tallinn I am tempted to add a sixth ‘D’ – debt - Chinese debt.

The message was clear at Lennart Meri was clear: Europeans should be under no illusions about the level of strategic ambition driving China’s BRI. This $1 trillion project is part of a China-centric ‘cob-web’ strategy designed to tie countries economically to Beijing as part of Beijing’s broader strategic competition with the United States and others. Today, BRI involves sixty-eight countries with the ‘Road’ stretching along some 6000 kilometres of sea lines between south-east Asia, the Pacific (Oceania) and North Africa. The ‘Belt’ sees immense Chinese investment in roads and railways across Central and Western Asia, the Middle East and, critically, Europe.

There is no such thing as a free bridge

On the face of it such investment should be welcomed. However, there is no such thing as a free bridge.  Chinese investment is not Western aid and development. Rather, China uses its corporations to exert influence, and if needs be coercion, by using cheap loans for the development of infrastructure in poorer countries to promote reliance and dependency by driving up debt-GDP ratios. When a country defaults on the debt China aggressively demands recompense, often in the form of strategic infrastructure, with their corporations often acting as the spear-tip of coercion.

For example, China recently (and effectively) seized the Sri Lankan port of Hambantota when Sri Lanka defaulted on its Chinese debt. The case had eerie parallels with the 1842 ceding by China’s then Qing dynasty of Hong Kong Island to the British during the First Opium War. Britain engineered the acquisition of Hong Kong Island, in line with its strategic aim of the time, to expand its mercantilist and imperial ambitions in South and East Asia. For China, the Sri Lankan port is no less strategic.

It is not the only parallel between China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Britain’s imperial past. Jonathan Hillman has just published a fascinating May 2019 piece for Washington’s CSIS entitled War and PEACE on China’s Digital Silk Road. Hillman highlights the efforts, of what I have dubbed the post-1815 Second British Empire, to control strategic communications. In the wake of victory over Napoleon what had been primarily a commercially-driven mercantilist empire increasingly became ‘strategic’ as British corporate and state interests merged. In Britain’s case the establishment of so-called All Red lines, an exclusive network of telegraph lines, helped facilitate London’s control and gave Britain a critical strategic communications advantage over rivals.

China is endeavouring to do a similar thing in this digital age through control over digital networks. 95% of all international communications take place through sea-bed cables. One of its flagship projects is called PEACE and takes place in Pakistan, formerly part of the British Raj. PEACE, or the Pakistan East Africa Cable Express, is designed to enable the fastest internet link between Asia and Africa.  The PEACE cable also begins in the port of Gwadar in Pakistan, which is also part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, and at which China would like to establish a naval base.   In other words, China is developing the capability and capacity to threaten those it does not control, and enhance its influence over the rest.  At present, China, or rather Huawei, is laying or enhancing some one hundred high data rate digital lines under the sea.

1 over 16 equals domination?

What of Europe? The dilemma that many Central and Eastern European countries (CEEC) face, but refuse to confront, concerns the nature, length and political implications of the strings attached to Chinese money. And, the likely impact of taking such money on their strategic relations with the United States.  In November 2015, China-CEEC co-operation was established at a big bash in Suzhou City. The Accord was (and is) where BRI enters Europe, with projects ranging from development, industrial capacity-building, innovative financing, trade enhancement and beyond.   On the face of it, the Accord simply enables trade and promotes prosperity for debt-ridden European countries. However, if past patterns of Chinese influence are to be applied in Europe, the Accord also implies a degree of potential coercion. It is that potential for Chinese coercion of both EU and NATO members that is worrying both Brussels and Washington. In particular, that in a crisis certain EU and NATO members would be ‘persuaded’ by Beijing to withhold their support for the Americans and thus, in effect, paralyse the Alliance.

Why is China so aggressive? Beijing is subject to a pressing imperative which drives China to apply all and every means available to expand its economy, and which belies the lazy Western idea that China always takes a long view. You know, the old 1960s Zhou Enlai joke about it being too early to assess the impact of the 1789 French Revolution. It is an imperative that was laid out clearly in President Xi Jingping’s 2013 China Dream speech, and which has been regularly re-stated since. Put simply, the Communist Party survives in unfettered power in China because in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre of democracy protesters the Chinese state established a new ‘contract’ with its people – unquestioned power in return for rising prosperity. Since 1989 Beijing has fulfilled that pledge through the astronomic growth of the Chinese economy often at, or above, 10% per annum. Much of that growth came from the modernisation of China itself. However, there are now signs that such internally-driven growth is slowing and China must seek to maintain growth through externally-driven extractive (Arctic BRI?) and exploitative policies abroad, hence the Belt and Road Initiative, whilst limiting access to the enormous Chinese market.

Belt, road and chains?

The BRI is thus part of an expansionist grand strategy driven by internal political imperatives. As such, the BRI is simply the flip side of China’s burgeoning military capabilities evident in its aggressive policies in the South China Sea and far beyond. The United States may have a world-wide presence, but it has no such aspirations to exert the kind of control over other states that Beijing seeks through the BRI.

  

Could Europeans both rely on the US for its security and defence, and China for infrastructure investment? Within certain limits, and if China observed the kind of rules enshrined in the World Trade Organisation. The problem is there are few limits to BRI, which is precisely why it is so seductive and so dangerous given the level of indebtedness it can generate. Whilst China has occasionally offered debt forgiveness it is rare, and only when a bigger strategic prize is in the offing. Beijing also refuses to play by trade (and many other) rules which the US not only observes, but by and large created. Critically, Europeans must understand that the United States and China are, and will continue to be, strategic competitors. The current round of trade tensions and the tech Cold War are merely symptoms of a structural competition that will shape geopolitics in the twenty-first century. And, given the nature of Sino-US strategic competition it will sooner rather than later force those Europeans seduced by Chinese money to choose sides.

It is vital Europeans understand the differences between democratic America and autocratic China. Yes, the United States can drive hard bargains on its European allies at times. Yes, US corporations often play hard ball. However, the Americans have been, and continue to be (European Deterrence Initiative???), extraordinarily generous to Europeans by affording them a defence which is far beyond that which Europeans seem willing themselves to afford. Moreover, because of the many separation of many powers under the US Constitution the relationship between the US Government and US commerce is often as tough as any between the US and third countries. There is no such separation of powers in China.  Indeed, Chinese companies are legally-required to act as agents of the Chinese state. It is precisely this ability to use corporate entities as strategic leverage which is making so many British lawmakers uneasy about Huawei’s possible role in the development of Britain’s 5G network.

In other words, those Europeans tempted by the shiny baubles in the BRI seduction pack must be under no illusions that over time the belt will gradually tighten and the road will begin to lead downhill towards the chains of political and strategic subjugation. In such circumstances, those same European states could well lose the protection of the United States as the cohesion of NATO becomes progressively undermined. In the security vacuum that would inevitably ensue they would also find themselves at the mercy of another strategic predator – Russia. Lennart Meri, of all people, would understand that.

Julian Lindley-French