Does America (Still) Want to Lead the Free World?

 “We confide in our strength, without boasting of it; we respect that of others, without fearing it”.

 Thomas Jefferson

Checks and balances

November 5^th, 2020. So, that was that! The Great Arsenal of Democracy has spoken…sort of. As I write the US is heading for a Biden presidency. However, the Democrats are likely to see their majority in the House of Representatives reduced and, crucially, fail to gain control of the US Senate.  If confirmed the real ‘winner’ is the US Constitution. The checks and balances it enshrines will ensure that a Biden White House will be an essentially centrist administration.  What does the last forty-eight hours suggest about the next four years for Europe and America’s leadership of the free world?

Many Europeans will be quietly celebrating this morning amidst the economic wreckage of COVID-19. At least the transatlantic relationship will return to some form of ‘business as usual’, some will suggest.  Wrong! It cannot and will not.  There are few concepts I can lay claim to but I was the first to suggest the foreign and security policy of the Trump presidency would be transactional. At the time I called upon Europeans to look beyond the politics of Trump at the structural challenges the Americans are facing, foreign and domestic. They did not.  Instead, Europeans have used President Trump as an alibi to avoid facing the hard security and defence choices they must now make. This is something, I fear, COVID-19 is about to make a whole lot worse.

The world is changing…

Some months ago I also asked a question: who will win COVID-19?  It will certainly not be Europe, but nor will it be the US.  The terrible twin titans of the post COVID-19 international system are geopolitics and geo-economics, neither of which are trending in the West’s favour.  The world is witnessing a profound shift in the balance of coercive power away from the democracies towards China, and by extension its piggy back partner, Russia. The economic and military rise of China also seems to be accelerating as a consequence of COVID-19 with profound implications for European defence and the transatlantic relationship.

The defence strategic consequences?  In spite of the still awesome military power projection the US Armed Forces are still capable of even the mighty US Armed Forces cannot be present in strength in all places all of the time across the full spectrum of twenty-first century conflict.  Power is relative and for a state to exert such influence it would need to be uniquely strong in relation to all other possible peer competitors. There may have been a moment back in the early 2000s when some Americans thought the US enjoyed such power and could act as the Global Policeman (even if many Americans denied such ambitions), but 911, Afghanistan and Iraq quickly proved such pretention to be illusory, if not delusional. The coming years will thus likely see a kind of information-digital-hypersonic arms race in which the autocracies systematically seek to ‘short-of-war’ exploit the many vulnerabilities that are also the very essence of democracy.

…but so is America

Then there is the changing nature of America itself. A lot of Europeans still tend to view America through the prism of ‘the Greatest Generation’, which in tandem with Churchill’s Britain and Stalin’s Russia won World War Two. They forget the isolationist Vandenberg America of the 1930s and ignore the extent to which the US is again fast changing. There were two telling trends in this election. First, the percentage of white voters fell from 70% in 2016 to 65% in 2020. Second, the sheer scale of voting revealed a far greater engagement of minorities in the electoral process. This is to be welcomed. Political legitimacy in liberal democracies rests upon the need for the greatest number of citizens to engage.  Analysts too often tend to see geopolitics in terms of power indicators, which are often stripped down to size of a respective state’s economy and the relative power of its armed forces.  However, the ability of a state to apply power also rests upon a range of other, often intangible domestic factors. The power of the ageing ‘baby boomer’ vote was again apparent in this election. However, their future is behind them and twenty years hence the US will wear a different identity and political complexion.

Lessons from history?

In some important (although not all) respects contemporary America is not unlike late imperial Britain in the 1920s.  On the face of it, 1920 saw British power and influence at its zenith. Britain emerged from World War One victorious and in 1920 still possessed by far the largest navy in the world, the true measure of global power at the time. However, Britain was also mired in debt, not unlike the US today which faces a budget deficit of some 16% GDP, the largest since 1945, and a national debt fast approaching $28 trillion.

Britain was also deeply divided.  The 1918 Representation of the People Act and the 1928 Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act extended the franchise to all men and women over the age of twenty-one.  With two strokes of the Parliamentary pen the age of High Victorian Aristocratic Imperialists (of which Churchill was very much a part) was effectively brought to an end. To say the political and strategic consequences were profound is an understatement.  Britain had been in relative decline on the international stage since the 1890s as Wilhelmine Germany emerged as a European industrial powerhouse, America stopped colonising itself and began to look outward, and the Empire of Japan began to take its first tentative steps towards Great Power. Important though such change undoubtedly was Britain’s retreat from Empire accelerated far more quickly because of the changing nature of Britain itself.  

Downton Abbey America?

The shift in the Britain of the 1920s away from Imperialism and towards Disarmament was not just a consequence of the sacrifice of World War One. With the seizure of power by the political leaders of the bourgeois and working classes a British world view began to emerge that was very different from that of the Patrician order of old. That is the implicit story of Downton Abbey which any fan will recognise. In what was perhaps the first great struggle between imperial globalists and social nationalists the Great Depression then further accelerated change in the global, political and social order, just like COVID economics seems to be doing today. The change showed itself most clearly over the question of Britain’s role in the world, in particular what was then termed Indian Home Rule.  Gandhi, Nehru and others were successful (eventually) in agitating for Indian independence, but what is not often recalled is the support for such independence in Britain itself.

Masked by Britain’s subsequent role in World War Two it is often overlooked that much of 1930s Britain no longer had the political appetite to be an imperial power. With the political empowerment of the working class, both men and women, British politics rapidly became focused on the domestic struggle between entitlement, capital and labour. In Britain, such tensions took the form of events like the 1926 General Strike and the rise of the Trades Union Congress.  In contemporary social media driven America it is reflected in culture wars, entrenched politics of identity and the demand for far greater political and real investment in promoting racial and social equality.  There is also the huge task that any new Administration must face of modernising American infrastructure, much of which is clapped out. 

These immense domestic pressures the new Administration will face also begs two further questions of Americans. First, do Americans still want to lead the free world?  Second, if Americans do, how? Britain’s past may again prove illuminating.  The Naval Defence Act of May 31^st, 1889 formally adopted the so-called Two Power Standard. This committed the Royal Navy to maintain twice the strength of the next two most powerful navies combined. On the face of it the Standard was a statement of British Imperial power. In fact, it was recognition that the French and Russian navies enjoyed the luxury of being able to make life exceedingly difficult for an over-stretched Royal Navy by choosing when, where and how to apply pressure the world over.  This is much the same dilemma the US faces today with the rise of China as a hybrid, cyber and potentially hyper war power, and Russia’s assertive coercion in and around much of Europe. In other words, for America to still lead the free world and defend Europe it will need to impose some form of ‘tax’ on the Allies to do it.  

Rise and Fall…

Britain’s decline was played out on the world’s oceans, as will America’s. Throughout the 1890s the challenge for Britain of controlling home waters, the Mediterranean and the sea lines of communication to Britain’s African colonies, India and the Eastern Empire became increasingly acute.  The appointment of Admiral Tirpitz in 1898 led to the eventual 1907 creation of Imperial Germany’s High Seas Fleet which was designed for one purpose – the defeat of the Royal Navy in Britain’s home waters. London soon recognised that in the face of such challenges Britain could no longer defend all of its interests everywhere, all of the time.

To solve the problem of what became known as imperial overstretch in January 1902 Britain forged the first Anglo-Japanese Alliance. The alliance helped transform the Chrysanthemum Throne into a regional-strategic Great Power, and all that happened thereafter, including the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. The policy quickly paid strategic dividends to Britain with the crushing May 1905 naval defeat of Russia by Japan at the Battle of Tsushima (with at least one Royal Navy officer in attendance) and helped lead to the Anglo-Russian Entente of 1907. 

America? America is not Britain and its power fundamentals are far stronger than Britain's ever was.  Therefore, if the US still has the will and political cohesion to lead the free world it can do so, but only in concert with committed and capable allies. In the Indo-Pacific that will mean deeper ties with Australia, South Korea and, of course, Japan. India? As for Europe, the Americans need NATO, but only if NATO can be transformed into a group of capable allies that can and will properly share risks, costs and burdens.  However, if such a new NATO is to be realised THIS America must want to lead and be willing to continue to bear the costs of such leadership, which will remain substantial.  Washington will also need to demonstrate the strategic patience needed to rebuild and maintain the alliances Washington increasingly needs. The alternative?  Look at Britain. A century ago London’s writ ran the length and breadth of the world. Today, London’s writ does not even run the length and breadth of Britain.

The difference between a President Biden and President Trump? They will be manifold, particularly in matters of style.  President Trump also saw American power as transactional because he for him international relations is little more than a protracted big business negotiation over global real estate. The transactionalism would be driven by a simple truth: the US has no alternative. Yes, there are many Americans who no longer confide in US strength and not a few who increasingly fear the power of the other, but the free world still needs American leadership and that leadership must both empower its people domestically and its allies globally. 

Julian Lindley-French  

NATO's Black Elephants

Black elephants? My friend Professor Paul Cornish puts it succinctly, “The real threat to NATO and its cohesion are Black Elephants; risks that are widely acknowledged and familiar (the ‘elephant in the room’) - but ignored. When the elephant can no longer be ignored it is passed off as an unpredictable surprise (a ‘black swan’) by those who were slow to address it. NATO’s biggest Black Elephant is the reluctance of its member countries to spend on defence.”

Embedded herein is the link to my video contribution to an event organised by Rome's Aspen Italia and the Istituto Affari Internazionale on October 8^th entitled The Future of NATO.

I do not pull my punches!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AR6QADCO3k&feature=youtu.be 

Julian Lindley-French

The NATO Strategic Integrated Operating Concept

“It is important to emphasise that the willingness to commit decisively hard capability with the credibility to war fight is an essential part of the ability to operate and therefore of deterrence…we cannot afford any longer to operate in silos – we have to be integrated: with allies as I have described, across Government, as a national enterprise, but particularly across the military instrument. Effective integration of maritime, land, air, space and cyber achieves a multi-Domain effect that adds up to far more than simply the sum of the parts – recognising – to paraphrase Omar Bradley – that the overall effect is only as powerful as the strength of the weakest Domain…We must chart a direction of travel from an industrial age of platforms to an information age of systems.”

General Sir Nick Carter, “The Integrated Operating Concept”, 30 September, 2020

Exercise Joint Warrior

NATO’s Exercise Joint Warrior is underway. It brings back fond memories. In 2013 I had the honour of being an observer. Apart from ‘decorating’ the wardroom of HMS Westminster with the substantial and substantive consequences of my patent lack of sea legs, and being pretty ill for twenty four distinctly unmemorable hours thereafter, I gained an invaluable insight into the maritime-amphibious business of the Alliance. Joint Warrior 2020 finishes tomorrow having conducted a series of mainly anti-submarine and contested landing exercises in the North Sea and having involved over 6,000 personnel and 81 ships from 11 nations.  Critically, the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) was also present in tandem with the Royal Navy. The past? No. The future.

The British-led exercise also pointed to the future by showing how a European maritime-amphibious future force could operate with the US future force in a contested battlespace. For the first time the new Royal Navy Carrier Strike Group was revealed with HMS Queen Elizabeth at its F35B Lightning 2 power projection core. The exercise was also taking place against the backdrop of NATO’s real twenty-first century challenge: how to transform the Alliance’s defence and deterrence posture, what President Macron rather unfairly called ‘brain dead’ NATO last December, into the super-smart, agile force the Alliance will need by decade’s end. 

It is a force that if needs be must have the capability and capacity to act across the mosaic that is hybrid, cyber and hyper warfare. A transformation that must also take place whilst the coming COVID-19 economic crisis wreaks havoc with European defence budgets. Even today even Europe’s largest navies, the Royal Navy and French Navy, are so small that if they seek to carry our Mahanian sea control, à la the RN Carrier Strike Group, it can only be done at the expense of Corbettian sea presence.  Any smaller they will be unable to perform either role. The solution?  A deep combined European Future Maritime-Amphibious Force built around a command hub focussed on the British and French navies.  The irony is that Britain’s departure from the EU may make such a force easier to realise now that the spectre of an EU Army/Navy has been removed from British concerns. 

Zircon and the US Future Navy

Future Allied defence and deterrence is not the only challenge implicit in Joint Warrior 2020. On October 6^th, US Secretary for Defense Mark Esper previewed Battle Force 2045, the plan for the US future navy. Esper offered the vision of a five hundred ship US Navy comprised of both manned and unmanned ships. The essential points of the Esper Plan is for more nuclear attack submarines, 50-60 amphibious assault ships that could also be used as light aircraft carriers (this is ironic for the Royal Navy as it pioneered such ships and then scrapped them), large (1000-2000 tons) and medium (500 tons) unmanned ships, together with extra-large sub-surface platforms (50 tons) that can host hypersonic missile and Artificially Intelligent drone swarms, with the future fleet supported by 80-90 frigates and longer range carrier strike aircraft, both manned and unmanned, that have far greater ‘reach’ than afforded by the F35B Lightning 2.

On October 7^th, as Exercise Joint Warrior got underway, and as a sign of the challenge Allied navies will face, President Putin’s sixty-eighth birthday present was a successful test of a 3M22 Tsirkon (Zirkon) hypersonic anti-ship missile which can travel at over 1.2 miles/2 kilometre per second up to 1,200 miles/2,000 km. A message? Absolutely. NATO? In my speech to the Committee for Standardization at NATO HQ in Brussels at the end of last month I said that the next ten years will see the equivalent of seventy years of past military technological development crammed into it and more.  There are some good signs. For example, the US and UK already enjoy what might be called an AI Special Relationship, but far more needs to be done by the Allies to compete in what could be a deadly race between democracy and autocracy.  

The NATO Strategic Integrated Operating Concept (NSIOC)

The Plan? Certainly, NATO needs a new Strategic Concept that reaffirms the enduring purpose of the Alliance and its fundamental tasks given the fast changing nature and scope of contemporary and future risks and threats. Critically, the Alliance also needs a NATO Strategic Integrated Operating Concept that would populate General Carter’s vision with real resources, something the British alone will be unable to do.  This is because the essential challenge for NATO deterrence and defence concerns the balance the European Allies must strike post COVID-19 between cost, military capability, military capacity, technology and the fast expanding military task-list that is being generated by the new strategic environment.  The next decade really will be different and dangerous.

That challenge is reinforced by the urgent need to effectively and efficiently organise cash-starved Bonzai European militaries into a force that can contribute meaningfully to Allied defence and deterrence, maintain interoperability in extremis with the US future force, and if needs be act as a high-end, first responder in and around Europe. As an aside, London should be congratulated for looking ahead but for the British there is also a profound danger that the forthcoming Integrated Review 2020, with its headline-grabbing focus on space and digital domains, will simply be yet another of those ‘clever’ London political metaphors to mask further cuts to Britain’s already waning fighting power. In other words, Britain’s future force only makes sense in a NATO context and only if it can work at the high end of operations with the Americans.

Thankfully, there are signs that such hard realities are beginning to be gripped. NATO’s new Concept for the Deterrence and Defence of the Euro Atlantic Area (DDA) is designed as a stepping stone en route to an adapted/transformed Alliance. It is also designed to deliver an unambiguous, consistent and continuous demonstration of Alliance military power with a commitment to operational purposefulness by emphasising not just awareness of, but also future effectiveness, across multiple warfare domains and in multiple geographic areas.

Given the level of strategic ambition necessarily implicit in NATO’s future defence and deterrence posture, including further reforms to the NATO Command Structure, the 2010 NATO Strategic Concept (‘Active Engagement, Modern Defence’) now belongs to another age.  This is because NATO will have to engineer a new force and resource centre of gravity at a higher end of military effect whilst also securing its citizens from what I have called 5D continuous strategic coercion (deception, disinformation, disruption, destabilisation and implied destruction).

The Path of Transformation

Realism is also needed as the path of NATO transformation rarely runs smooth and many Allies are still deeply reluctant to embrace the change needed to save the Alliance upon which they rely for their defence. In 2018 the North Atlantic Council tasked General Scaparotti, the then Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), to set out his ‘Strategic Thoughts’ about both the threats to the Alliance and the response.  This led to the 2019 NATO Military Strategy (NMS) which is entitled ‘Comprehensive Defence, Shared Response’ (CDSR).  The NATO Military Strategy adopts a whole of security approach and not only frames the development and employment of the Alliance’s Military Instrument of Power (MIoP), but also offers a road-map to the future. There are three core elements to the Strategy. First, it recognises the need for the Alliance to confront again geostrategic competition, as well as the dangers of pervasive instability and the strategic shocks they can trigger as central to the strategic environment with which NATO must contend. Second, the Strategy identifies Russia and Terrorist Groups (TGs) as the main strategic threats to the Alliance, given their depth, breadth, duration and complexity. Third, the Strategy recognises the need to move away from Crisis Response and both contest and counter these threats by developing a common capacity for competition and deterrent power in peacetime, crisis and defence. Critically, whilst NATO remains a defensive Alliance the 2019 Military Strategy also moves the Alliance from having a reactive posture to a deliberate strategy for force deployment and employment.

The DDA emerged from the Military Strategy under General Wolters, the current SACEUR to act as the bridge between the Military Strategy and is called (by me) the NATO Strategic Integrated Operating Concept (NSIOC).  This is because DDA is about the core business of credible defence and deterrence: warfighting in the Twenty-First Century. As such the DDA provides NATO with a coherent framework and approach to such a challenge by addressing military deterrence activities in peacetime and defence actions in crisis and conflict. DDA also addresses scale of threats and ambition of response by considering Alliance roles and tasks around ‘360 degrees’ of large-scale, long-term complexity. Critically, it also seeks to address something your correspondent has long been pushing for: strategic interdependency between the Alliance’s ability to address threats from Russia inside its area of responsibility (AOR), and Terrorist Groups outside its AOR.

Above all, DDA is an Alliance effort to fully understand that complex nature of modern warfare as a contest, where deterrence must demonstrate an informed and unambiguous ability to defend, whilst defence will demand control of several geographic areas and multiple domains of warfare simultaneously.  Critically, the DDA is analysis-led not cost-led and focuses on how Russia and Terrorist Groups not only gain geographic, domain and readiness advantage, but also how they operate over space and time. To that end, the DDA establishes clear geographic and domain Deterrence and Defence Objectives (mapped to activity) that would also impose tactical, operational and strategic dilemmas on adversaries.  As I understand it, China is not discussed at great length but the methodology could be applied to such an end.  The increasing role of advanced civilian-generated technology (AI, big data, quantum computing, Nano, bio etc. and et al) is also not addressed directly but is implicit.  

Exercise Joint Warrior 2020 must be judged against the backdrop of both the DDA and the NATO Military Strategy. What does it suggest about Joint Warrior 2030? Impressive though such NATO exercises may appear as a news item, power is relative and the maritime-amphibious domain is but one domain of Allied deterrent and defence effect that will need to be credible across air, sea, land, space, cyber, information and knowledge. In other words, the DDA opens the door to a smart NATO that all such exercises must contribute to by combining firepower, resiliency, manoeuvre and innovation.  Indeed, the DDA reimagines deterrence by denial so that is not simply a function of weight of force, but through active and hyper-fast reinforcement of what are known as ‘Fires’ (both multi-platform & multi-domain) held at depth and distanced underpinned by agile and robust command and control. As such, the DDA demands far greater and far more dynamic force readiness and responsiveness that will be critical to the multi-speed, multi-scale, multi-domain NATO that must be developed in the years to come as part of a future war NATO Strategic Integrated Operating Concept.

Exercise Joint Warrior 2030

Exercise Joint Warrior 2030 has two distinct elements both critical to the high-end testing of both its maritime and amphibious capabilities. Much of the NATO Task Group is comprised of forces assigned to the new Allied Command Operations Heavy Mobile Force, some 90% of which is European.  The maritime element first establishes an air, sea and sub-surface defensive ‘bubble’ around the force using both manned and unmanned systems. F35 Lightning 2s, together with a raft of ‘loyal wingmen’ drones, also provide an extensive ‘umbrella’ for the force as well as undertaking a range of hyper-joint tasks ranging from surveillance to electronic hyper warfare, data gathering and aerial top cover. Below the surface British and French nuclear attack submarines, with their ‘loyal school’ of underwater unmanned vehicles, provide a similar defensive bubble supported by super-quiet Dutch and German electric-powered submarines.

The amphibious element is where the changes in NATO materiel and doctrine of the last decade are most obvious. Some miles offshore a wave of landing craft and CB90 assault craft depart the British heavy aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales and stealthily make their way to the shore.  At the spear-tip of the force is 45 Commando, Royal Marines, US Second Marine Expeditionary Brigade and the Royal Netherlands Mariniers, together with the new AI-enabled Joint Commando Air-Maritime Assault Force. Most of the force continues to the beach undetected, but halfway into the target part of the force veers away. From the decks of the assault craft ghostly figures ascend to the heavens.  3 Commando Brigade, Royal Marines is going into action.  Equipped with the latest Mark 5 Gravity Jet assault suits the battalion represents the future of airborne assault https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL02e4L-RQo&feature=youtu.be. As each commando rises into the night sky s/he carries an assault rifle and a series of small ground attack missiles. Heavier personal equipment is carried alongside by a personally-assigned ‘intelligent’ lift drone.  

As the Commandos begin the assault a further phalanx of ‘intelligent’ fast strike drones lift off the decks of the British aircraft carrier and make their way towards the littoral. Royal Air Force,  Royal Navy and US Marine Corps F-35B Lightning 2s are also warming up on the deck to reinforce the shock the Royal Marines, Special Air Service and Special Boat Squadron are about to inflict.  Timed to match the moment of the enemy’s least readiness and thus create maximum shock and confusion, the SAS and SBS force move towards their respective objectives.  As they advance flying commandos appear from several directions at once and target each individually identified ‘mark’, whilst a swarm of AI drones probe and then penetrate enemy defences destroying their digital net. The Special Forces, now supported by the ground force, quickly seize the objective and establish a bridgehead for the follow-on force. Fleet Air Arm Merlin 3 helicopters with advanced noise suppression blades move in behind the intelligent machine attack drone ‘swarm’ so that the Royal Marines and their US and Dutch counterparts can maintain momentum from the Littoral.   

Fantasy? Some years ago I led a significant project for the commander of an important Allied navy into the future of so-called ‘brown water operations’. Entitled Effect in the All Water Battlespace: Riverine Operations the essence of the report was how best to fight and stay in a contested Littoral environment and at the same time reduce the cost per naval platform per operation through innovation, adaptation and a strategic partnership with key civilian actors, such as the Smit Tak and Mammoet.  To meet its goals the study combined strategy, innovation and technology to form new partnerships and ideas. Two key findings were that a) many civilian contractors are used to operating in contested zones; and b) much of the technology available to such contractors was far in advance of their military counterparts. The ultimate aim was to understand how an essentially European force could better fulfil its mission in the Littoral as quickly, effectively, affordably and successfully as part of what is known in the jargon as ‘ship to objective manoeuvre’. In other words, the report thought future. That is precisely what others are now doing.

As Exercise Joint Warrior got underway another exercise was taking place, albeit on a wholly different scale. On October 1^st, China’s National Day, a large-scale amphibious ‘invasion’ began which was designed to simulate an assault on Taiwan.  The exercise was a test of a People’s Liberation Army Navy Marines Corp that is currently being expanded from a 20,000 strong force of naval infantry into a power projection force modelled on the US Marines Corps some 100,000 strong. The PLANMC is indicative of the fast change underway around the world and places Europe’s increasing strategic unworldliness in stark relief.

If NATO is to remain relevant it needs more than a new Strategic Concept. It needs a NATO Strategic Integrated Operating Concept and a NATO Europe Future Force that can demonstrate to themselves and their American allies that Europeans are at last willing to pull their strategic weight, meet the associated costs and take the necessary risks. Given the growing world-wide commitments of America’s over-stretched forces the credibility of Alliance defence and deterrence need nothing less. A good start? NATO HQ starts promoting the Concept for the Defence and Deterrence of the Euro-Atlantic Area rather than trying to hide it!

Julian Lindley-French

NATO 3.0: Standardization, Interoperability and Mobility

 “Imagine this: seventy years of military technical advancement crammed into ten years. That is the challenge NATO must confront if it is to preserve the peace”.

Professor Julian Lindley-French

October 1st

Why S & I?

On Tuesday I had the very distinct honour of addressing the seventieth anniversary meeting of the Committee for Standardization at NATO HQ in Brussels in support of my old friend, Assistant Secretary-General Camille Grand and Lieutenant General Scott Kindsvater. My presentation was entitled “Seventy Years On: Meeting the Standardization-Interoperability Challenge”. My message was characteristically blunt as it needed to be: critical to the future Defence and Deterrence of the Euro-Atlantic Area will be the speed of relevance of allied defence capability and capacity with unity of effort and purpose integrated at the level and myriad points of required network-centric effect.  

Why? Standardization and Interoperability are two sides of the same capability and capacity ‘coin’ and key to generating credible and relevant force at an affordable cost in the post-COVID 19 environment.  However, NATO’s future architecture, together with the specialisation and interoperability that supports it, will need to change rapidly over the coming decade. Central to that will be the ability of the Alliance to move forces and resources across its area of operations far more nimbly and securely than today, with the digital at least as important as the physical. 

This is because the Alliance faces two possibly existential challenges: the now war and the future war. The now war is already underway and stretches across the 5Ds of complex strategic coercion in the form of systematically applied deception, disinformation, destabilisation, disruption and implied or actual destruction. In a speech this week General Sir Nick Carter, Chief of the UK Defence Staff acknowledged as much in his vision of a new British Integrated Operating Concept.  What he was describing was, in effect, a future defence against future war, the deterring which will become NATO’s primary over the next decade. The speed of command and warfare will accelerate exponentially as super-computing steadily gives way to quantum computing which in turn drives forward increasingly intelligent and autonomous artificially intelligent drones and other systems. Given that what will NATO’s ‘battlespace’ look like in 2030? Bio, hypersonics, Nano, big data and advanced machine learning will all abound?  NATO needs to answer that question because if it does not others will, most notably China and Russia.

How S & I?

How? Let me assume that in spite of the growing threat to Europe from the likes of China, Russia and a host of global reach, catastrophe-seeking terrorist groups, Europeans are not going to opt for what would theoretically at least be the most efficient application of limited security and defence resources – a common defence.  Given that, and the growing pressure on the United States and its armed forces from a host of threats the world over, the only logical way for Europeans to close the yawning gap between the defence they need and the defence they can afford is to forge a much closer collective defence ‘identity’ through NATO. 

Only NATO can ensure standardization and interoperability take place at sufficiently high a level to preserve and strengthen the all-important deterrent: high-end military interoperability with the US future force.  The purpose of NATO of standardization and interoperability should thus be the creation of a robust, digitized, high-end, first responder, multi-domain fully autonomous (if needs be) NATO Europe Future Force able to operate alongside US forces in an emergency and deal with the most pressing of contingencies in and around the Euro-Atlantic air, sea, land, cyber, space area of operations if US forces are busy elsewhere. Critically, such a force must be ready by 2030 at the latest. If not, then we Europeans will be complicit in creating the conditions for future war through the de facto appeasement of a fast changing and dangerous reality and the slow retreat of NATO forces into deep vulnerability via the Maginot Line cul-de-sac that is low-end force 'co-operability'.

 Why NATO?

The EU certainly has a role to play. PESCO, the European Defence Agency, the European Defence Fund and the Co-ordinated Annual Review of Defence (CARD) have a critical role to play. There will also be several EU and NATO countries that will be very keen for such an effort to be focussed on the former to 'protect' their respective defence industries. However, if standardisation is EU-led it will inevitably be more to the analogue rather than the digital end of the future tech industrial standards that will increasingly shape the future force. This would lower the capability centre of gravity of the European Future Force and weaken interoperability in the future complex battlespace between US and European forces. This would inevitably place US forces under even more pressure to be the vanguard of all Allied military engagements. Enemies will know this and thus seek to create as many simultaneous attacks as possible to expose NATO’s critical and growing vulnerability: US military over-stretch and an inability of non-US forces to withstand shock or generate a meaningful response in the wake of a high-end attack in Europe.

Will industry play ball? NATO S and I must be as much about shaping and exploiting industrial tech standards as building the future force. It needs to. The NATO Industrial Advisory Group (NIAG) has a vital role to play. However, the age of naïve globalisation must be brought to an end. Allied governments must convince the West’s civilian tech-industry to be a little less global and little more Western when it comes to future defence and deterrence. After all, that is precisely what Beijing has done by investing in the ‘Chinaisation’ of its tech and the standardization and joint interoperability of its own increasingly impressive future force. Parochial Euro-Atlantic defence industrial protectionism will also need to be removed from these issues with the NATO Europe Future Force a driver of defence technological and industrial innovation via better aligned US and European security and defence industrial interests. 

In short that will mean a host of projects that see US tech opened up with better European access to US ‘black box’ technology, far earlier industrial involvement in both European-led and US-led project specifications (e.g. a much better version of the F35 programme), with Europeans far more willing to buy far more off the US shelf without inflated US servicing contracts. Finally, Europeans will need to create a much wider concept of what is a 'defence' industry in the 2020s. The British ‘Aircraft Carrier Alliance’ is a case in point. To build the new ships the ACA sought to exploit much of the national supply chain and far beyond. It was lumpy and costly but important lessons about innovation were learned.  In return the US must commit to buy far more European equipment with the NATO Europe Future Force a vehicle for the development of much more European ‘kit’ the US might want to buy. That means a European Defence and Technological Industrial Base (EDTIB) that is far broader, far more responsive and far better at fielding advanced ‘make a difference’ equipment than today, as well as agile enough to support a host of new technologies (AI) and the start-up companies that drive much of the innovation.

What about M?

Innovative and creative thinking will be as critical as adaptive systems, even if that means changing the way NATO does business. For example, I am currently supporting a major project on enhancing and improving military mobility during a crisis in Europe. Indeed, it is impossible to discuss the future of standardisation and interoperability without also considering military mobility, because the ability to move forces and resources quickly are an essential component of credible defence and deterrence. Frankly, until the European allies share roughly the same strategic assessment with each other, and more or less that of the US, the danger is that little will move S, I and M from being a series of partial, tactical-level projects to becoming part of the Alliance’s future strategic defence and deterrence architecture. Perhaps by introducing other adaptive instruments such as military mobility to the S & I debate, and linking all of it to a new narrative about the enhanced civ-mil crisis mobility it fosters, the Allies will begin to draw their own conclusions about how best to meet their NATO obligations in the most efficient and effective manner possible in the changed and fast changing post COVID-19 strategic environment.

There is, of course, a politico-strategic dimension to all of this. Implicit in S, I and M is a very different concept of transatlantic burden-sharing.  In simple terms, unless Europeans demonstrate to Americans a far greater willingness to share the burden of their own defence in time the Americans may not only be unwilling to bear the load, but also unable. Europeans must not dismiss this threat to the Alliance. The Trump narrative that Europeans are free-riders on the US is taking hold.  An opinion poll conducted for the Chicago Council on Global Affairs on September 17^th entitled “Divided We Stand” and led by Dina Smelz, was clear if unsettling. Americans continue to view alliances as a key part of US international engagement, and a majority continue to believe alliances benefit American interests.  However, 57% of Americans interviewed support the Trump administration’s decision to decrease the number of US troops in Germany, whilst an additional 16% percent believed that all US troops should be withdrawn from Germany.”  The good news is that 73% of those interviewed believe the US should remain committed to NATO, whilst 52% supported the use of US forces in the event of a Russian invasion of the Baltic States.

NATO 3.0: The Future Integrated Operating Defence and Deterrence Architecture

Standardization, interoperability and mobility are means to an end for enhanced Allied defence and defence in a fast changing and deteriorating strategic environment. Central to NATO’s ability to fight its now and future war about the re-balancing of NATO’s ends, ways and means.  To achieve that the Allies have to become far better at dividing the political from the structural which prevents the proper assessment of what NATO will need from its nations in the decade to come. This means moving the NATO debate beyond the stale question of whether Allies spend 2% of GDP on defence by 2024 of which 20% per annum must be on new equipment. Rather, the debate must become far more focussed on the best application of collective resources in pursuit of NATO’s future defence and deterrence architecture.  Here, it is the responsibility of the Alliance to offer its political leaders, and indeed its citizens (like me) a clear vision of such an architecture so that we all know what we are paying for. That means going significantly further than both the Defence and Deterrence of the Euro-Atlantic Area (DDA) document or the 2019 NATO Military Strategy.  NATO needs a new Strategic Concept for a new Strategic Architecture!

There also needs to be a much clearer NATO strategic narrative with enhanced standardization, interoperability and mobility at its adaptation, innovation-led core. A new narrative which states unequivocally that in spite of COVID-19 not only are we Europeans moving to do more for our own defence we are determined to build together a new digitised defence within the framework of a new N|TO Integrated Operating Architecture. And, that we fully understand that NATO defence and deterrence cannot be separated from global peace for which a strong US remains essential. For that reason Europeans together recognise the urgent need to ease pressures on US forces by building the first responder, high end, cross domain European future force.

Next steps? This week and for the first time the new British heavy aircraft-carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth took on a full air wing of F35 Lightning 2 strike aircraft and Merlin helicopters as part of NATO Exercise Joint Warrior.  The force is comprised of aircraft from RAF 617 (Dambusters) Squadron, the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm and, critically, US Marines Corps strike aircraft from (VFMA) 211 Squadron. It is an example of not just deep standardization and interoperability, but the deep joint and combined force operating concept that must be a central pillar of NATO’s 2030 defence and deterrence architecture. Such interoperability will be vital to enabling the US to make better use of its forces and resources the world over and keep a strong deterrence presence in Europe with allies. Burden-sharing in politically demonstrable action.

Ultimately, enhanced standardization, interoperability and mobility are critical to what must be a new transatlantic strategic security and defence ‘contract’ – NATO 3.0. The US will continue to guarantee European defence in return for Europeans not only doing far more for their own defence, but helping the Americans to help them.  As such, S, I & M afford the Alliance not only tactical value, but strategic value. Why? Over the next decade seventy years of military-technological advancement really will be crammed into ten and force upon the world-wide web of democracies of which NATO is a critical part the most profound of choices: do we choose to be strategic prey or do we have teeth?

Julian Lindley-French

 

 

Britain's Strategic Culture Wars

 Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim”

 Thomas Babington Macaulay

 

Introduction

Is Britain fit for its new-found ‘freedom’?  Do either the British Establishment or the British people realise just what “Global Britain” will demand of them? What should British power be for – soft and hard? On the face of it at least, Britain remains a very powerful actor. The Henry Jackson Society’s Audit of Geopolitical Capability even has Britain as the world’s second most powerful state due to what it calls “…a broad spectrum of capabilities” Sadly, for Britain, power is about so much more than mere statistics and the Jackson assessment fails to consider the broad spectrum of vulnerabilities from which Britain also suffers.  Britain is also locked in a strategic culture war of which Brexit is both part and consequence.

Furthermore, Britain was a very different place in 1973 when it entered the then European Economic Community. Indeed, for all its myriad of economic and social problems Britain was still a power of some heft in the world. Almost fifty years on Britain is at best a medium weight regional strategic power.  Consequently, Britain’s departure from the EU far more than a mere institutional re-alignment. It is the abandonment of community for anarchy that will demand of the British very different kinds of leaders and a markedly changed mind-set about the relationship between law and power. Is Britain up the challenge of such a transformation?  Is Global Britain anything more than a ‘BoJo’ wet dream?

Anarchy versus Community

Most states beyond Europe exist in anarchy, a state of nature in which power rather than law is pre-eminent and which is euphemistically called the international system.  For as long as the democracies were at the pinnacle of relative power the nature of that anarchy was tempered by legal instruments in the form of treaties. However, with Europe’s values-led civilianistic welfare states retreating in the face of interests-led security states such as China, the very nature of the international system is again changing. Lexpolitik, the application of legal power in international relations is once again being eclipsed by Machtpolitik, the primacy of the strong over the weak. 

Even the world’s most powerful democracy, the United States, is often more at ease with Machtpolitik than Lexpolitik. Historically, much of the American Establishment has seen treaties as mere instruments to enshrine the leadership of the ‘Shining City on the Hill’ and its manifest destiny.  In other words, treaties were for ‘lesser’ powers. This view is reflected in the mistaken American belief that both World War One and World War Two were in effect European civil wars fought between inherently aggressive European states, rather than a struggle between early democracy and classical and radical autocracy. President Trump has taken such a world view one step further by importing the transactional business anarchy from whence he came into US statecraft. This is why he is far more comfortable with Russia's President Putin than Germany’s Chancellor Merkel who exists in German legalism, at the other end of the power-law spectrum.

Contemporary Britain has long confused values with interests. Tensions over the Government’s UK Internal Market Bill are but the latest iteration of a struggle for the purpose and method of policy. Almost all the parliamentary rebels opposed to the bill were lawyers who believe international relations should be ‘rules-based’, i.e. governed by treaties and laws. Moreover, the entire Brexit negotiating process has revealed an essential tension between an EU, which sees everything in legalistic terms, and a Britain just beginning to realise what stark policy choices is must confront as it re-enters the ‘world’ in which the likes of China, Russia, Turkey and the US are used to operating. In such a world Britain’s magical ‘soft’ power counts for little if nought.  The problem is that law without power is not worth the vellum it is scribed upon, and over a long period the relationship between law and power in Europe has become ever more estranged, as though power itself is the problem from which Europeans must protect themselves. The result is self-evident today in the sovereignty deficit from which Europe suffers and its precipitous strategic decline.

One reason the Brexit negotiations have been so taut is because they ultimately concern two contending views of how Europe and the world should work. Indeed, under Theresa May even Britain’s negotiators shared the EU world-view. For the European Commission power must be enshrined in law that it both controls and interprets.  This also affords the Commission real power in what will ultimately become an existential battle with the EU member-states it purports to support and yet seeks to supplant. For Dominic Cummings, the eminence tres-grise of this particular Administration Brexit is thus not only about a struggle for power between what he sees as two sovereign entities, but also about the nature of power itself. For the negotiations to succeed Britain has to successfully convince the Commission that it is indeed a sovereign equal, whilst for the Commission the very idea of a European state being its sovereign equal is anathema. 

Managers versus statesmen and women

Another essential challenge Britain now faces concerns the nature of those in charge.  After almost fifty years in the EU Britain is governed by technocratic managers, many from a legal background. What it needs are far more statesmen and women. Any candidates? Prime Minister Johnson makes political capital out of his hero Winston Churchill.  However, Churchill belonged to a different age and a different Britain.  By historical and strategic standards Britain’s contemporary political leaders are lightweight. They cut their political teeth in the post-Cold War age of Brussels when the method for political gain was influence in Brussels, or if not blaming the self-same Brussels for their many mistakes.

Such political fecklessness has been aided and abetted by an under-resourced Whitehall High Establishment plagued by political appointees in the form of Special Advisors or SPADS. The result is a kind of political gridlock in what far too much importance is placed on the 24 hour news cycle protecting ministers from their own folly, and far too little on dealing with weighty issues. It is as the whole Westminster/Whitehall bubble has become a giant machine for kicking difficult issues down a seemingly never-ending road. Contrast that with Britain’s political and practitioner elite a century or so ago which was much more focussed on the problems of Empire and a balance of power with other states in Britain’s favour within the anarchy of the international system.  In other words, big stuff, whatever one thinks of it by contemporary standards.

Statecraft?

Such imperatives necessarily reinforced the need for statecraft – the relentless and considered application of state power over time and global space in pursuit of the national interest.  At the core of British power was also an elite civil service that routinely spoke truth to it and had the acumen and abilities to so do. Now? For much of the twentieth century Whitehall has necessarily had to manage Britain’s relative decline whilst the political class has pretended it was not happening.  Indeed, Britain’s joining of the then EEC was part of that process.  Since 1973 with Britain in the ‘Community’ the main focus of Whitehall has been managing Britain’s influence in the EU. For all the importance of the US, NATO and British security and defence policy, what matters to politicians is domestic policy.  As Bill Clinton once famously said, ‘it’s the economy, stupid’! It still is.  

The consequence has been the steady abandonment of the statecraft and the big strategic thinking for which London was once known for the penny packet daily EU interactions of Brussels, allied to the Blair-led penchant for strategic virtue-signalling.  Such process has placed a particular premium not only on good lawyers and policy managers, but spin doctors.  Indeed, spin seems to have become ‘substance’ for much of Britain’s political elite. Today, the very managers charged with the shift of Britain from European legalism to global powerism are people who, by their nature, simply do not believe in the mission.  Several government lawyers resigned this past week claiming they were doing so out of principle because a state like Britain does not break international law. Nor, ideally, should it. However, behind their high principle is a much more fundamental issue of power. The shift from community to anarchy will undoubtedly see lawyers loosening their grip on both Westminster and Whitehall. Or, at least, it should. The very idea of lawyers ‘managing’ anarchy is oxymoronic.  Proof? The emergence of the Machiavellian Dominic Cummings to pre-eminence…for however long he lasts.

The consequences

Britain’s abandonment of community for anarchy also has near home consequences. It has certainly fuelled profound tensions with the Republic of Ireland over the inner-Irish border. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement (GFA) which brought a cessation to the armed struggle was, given the circumstances, clever statecraft. It was also a fudge and to maintain peace it must continue to be so. Clause 2, Section 1 (iii) of the GFA is clear: until and unless the people of Northern Ireland decide otherwise Northern Ireland remains an integral part of the UK and thus two regulatory and sovereign entities will continue to exist on the island of Ireland.  There is no question that because both Britain and Ireland were EU member-states the issue of the border retreated. However, anyone who remembers ‘bandit country’ during the Troubles knows what a dangerous demarcation it was, particularly in places like South Armagh. A new fudge had been negotiated in the form of the Withdrawal Agreement but that is now also being questioned. Dublin has every right to be exasperated but what it is powerless in the face of a power struggle between London and the European Commission in which the GFA is now mired.

Ideally, there should be a democratic ‘border poll’ to settle the now/again contested issue of sovereignty. Unfortunately, the United Kingdom is sufficiently fragile that London cannot afford to accidentally legitimise a second Scottish independence referendum. Equally, the Commission can also not escape blame free for it has undoubtedly sought to exploit this issue to weaken the political bonds between Great Britain and Northern Ireland to demonstrate to all member-states the price they would pay if any of them dared follow Britain’s lead and move from community to anarchy. Whilst the European Commission is not an enemy of Britain, it is no friend.  

Test of power

Britain is thus facing a profound test of power. It would be nice to think the forthcoming Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy (IR 2020) would at least acknowledge such a test.  It would also be encouraging if there was some effort to establish how Britain’s tools for security, defence, development and foreign policy could be re-forged into a strategic implement for leveraging national influence.  An indicator of any such strategic ambition would be a much beefed-up National Security Council.

The need for such unity of strategic purpose and effort is not just to enable Britain to better compete in an anarchic international system. Britain is also fast losing influence in the two ‘communities’ that continue to afford Britain some influence – the UN Security Council and NATO.  Unless Britain begins to better match words with committed forces and resources then it is hard to see how London can over time retain the influence it still just about has in either institution.  The French are still manoeuvring to ‘relieve’ Britain of the post of Deputy Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (DSACEUR) in NATO. This is hardly a surprise. A weak Britain will find it particularly hard to remain a permanent member of the UN Security Council (UNSC) if it no longer has the military power to fulfil its security responsibilities.  The UNSC is neither a retirement home for the strategically infirm nor an executive committee of the UN. The good news is there is still some evidence Britain can face that test. London’s support for Ukraine is important and so-called ‘ferret missions’ to test Russian air defences suggest a willingness to be robust in the face of aggression still exists.

Britain: Between community and anarchy

Global Britain 2021 will need to demonstrate that it is no longer Global Britain 1921. First, Britain must finally escape the clutches of imperial nostalgia. Second, London must move to position Britain as an important, modern regional-strategic European power, even as it leaves the EU. Third, London will need to re-learn the art of statecraft and generate the power to demonstrate Britain’s continuing importance to other Europeans and Americans. Fourth, the British world view will need to be both hard-headed and reasonable, built on a philosophy of liberal realism that avoids any repeat of the naïve globalisation that successive governments foisted on Britain and which opened the country up to a myriad of avoidable vulnerabilities.  London’s creation of a new groupings of like-minded democracies in the form of D10 is a first step in the right direction. The alternative is a dark one. Unless effectively led there is the very real prospect that a combination of Brexit and COVID-19 will finally kill Britain off as a power, if not Britain itself.  London is trying to pull off a complex extraction from a complicated community whilst constitutionally-compromised (Scotland), mired in COVID-19 debt and led by an elite establishment the massive majority of whom do not believe in the mission. 

For almost fifty years Britons have grown accustomed to the comfort blanket afforded them by both the EU and NATO. Britain has left the EU and unless Europeans reinforce NATO it is hard to see how an over-stretched America can carry the Alliance for much longer. At least illusion is about to be stripped away and Britain will be forced once again to either swim in anarchy red of tooth and claw, or sink.  There is a wider danger. Britain still matters. If a democracy with the power and weight of Britain performs poorly on the international stage, or is even dismembered, the balance of power between the civilianistic and militaristic powers will shift rapidly and markedly towards the latter.  No pressure then, London.   

What should British power be for? British ‘statecraft’ must reflect an uncomfortable truce in the strategic culture wars between the Machiavellian entropy of Dominic Cummings and his ilk and Westminster-Whitehall’s can’t see the strategic woods for the tree-by-tree processors. As Britain shifts from community to anarchy lawyers must accept that law without power is simply virtue-signalling indulgence, whilst the likes of Dominic Cummings must understand that power without law is the not only the antithesis of parliamentary democracy, but a threat to its very survival. Ultimately, for a state like Britain power and law must merge. In concert with democracies the world over Britain’s continued aim must thus be to endow rules-based international relations with sufficient power to enable it to prevent the worst excesses of might and constrain and shape those that seek to subvert it. In other words, the very purpose of British power is to uphold the rules it helped write and outside of the EU Britain will need significantly more hardish power to realise such an end. Only time will tell if Britain sinks or swims. Only time will tell if Britain’s elite is up to the challenge? How much time has Britain got?

Julian Lindley-French