The Strategic Influence Game 5: A German Europe or a European Germany?

“I have always found the word “Europe” in the mouths of those politicians who wanted from other powers something they did not dare demand in their own name”.

Otto von Bismarck, German Chancellor, 1871-1890

Alphen, the Netherlands, 15 November. Germany has never found the leadership of Europe easy to attain or to execute. And yet Germany today finds itself the unrivalled leader of the European Union. Can Germany for once get leadership right?

Only at the very 1871 beginning of modern Germany’s uneasy existence was Berlin led by a man who grasped both the possibilities and dangers of German power. The very creation of the then German Empire rocked the rickety European balance of power to its core. And yet somehow Iron Chancellor Otto von Bismarck steered Germany (relatively) peacefully through a minefield of competing European interests. With his dismissal in 1890 by an unbalanced Kaiser Wilhelm II Germany and Europe began the long slide towards the twin and linked catastrophes of World Wars One and Two.

Today Germany is back. It would be easy to think that the ‘sudden’ emergence of Germany as Europe’s natural leader is a consequence of the Eurozone disaster. In fact Germany has been slowly recovering its position at the centre of European power politics since 1945. And yes power politics still exist in Europe even if masked by the political correctness of Euro-speak. The Eurozone Summit Statement of 26 October simply made German leadership official.

The facts speak for themselves. The 2011 German economy at $3.3 trillion or €2.5 trillion is at least 30% bigger than that of either France or Britain and thanks to reforms in the mid-naughties structurally far more efficient than either. At 81,729,000 the educated German population is again 30% bigger than the two other members of the EU’s so-called ‘Big Three’. Critically, Germany is the world’s second largest exporter with exports accounting for some 33% of national output. For all the current German angst the Euro has been the great German wealth creator. Indeed, Germany’s 2011 trade surplus stands at $20.7 billion or €15.2 billion, some 66% of that exports to its indebted Eurozone partners. Quite simply, the Euro has offset the high cost of German production and created a customs union (Zollverein) for German exports, which was Germany’s 1914 war aim.

So, the EU has done for Germany what two disastrous wars could not, cement Germany as the natural leader of Europe and by extension supplant Britain as the natural European strategic partner of the United States. But here’s the rub; just when Europe needs decisive German leadership Berlin is unable to deliver. Indeed, having gained the power and influence that her political forebears dreamed of not-so-Iron Chancellor Merkel is probably incapable of exercising it either for the good of Germany or Europe.

First, the German Constitution is a direct descendent of the 1948 settlement imposed by the victorious allies upon a defeated Germany. Its very purpose is to prevent the concentration of power in one set of political hands in one Berlin place at any one time. Consequently, Chancellor Merkel possesses nothing like the domestic political authority of either President Sarkozy or Prime Minister Cameron.

Second, the current generation of German leaders are the heirs of a political culture that was so successfully ‘de-nazified’ they still find the concept of German leadership at worst abhorrent or at best uneasy. The whole point of German power is not to have strategic influence, especially of the ‘nasty’ military variety and especially over other Europeans. Germany will thus endeavour to ‘rule’ through the European Commission.

Third, having gained more from the Euro than any other EU member-state the German people are not at all interested in paying to rescue it, demonstrating the limits to their (and Germany’s) ‘Europeanness’. This explains Chancellor Merkel’s reluctance to let the European Central Bank act as the lender of last resort to the Euro-rule-breaking southern Europeans. It also explains her efforts to get countries that have far poorer GDPs per capita to pay for the still-born European Financial Stability Facility.

Equally, there are signs that Germany is slowly re-learning the art of Realpolitik. The opening of the Nordstream gas pipeline last week suggests a new strategic energy relationship with Russia which will concern Central and Eastern European states. The democracy-defying Franco-German presumption of Eurozone leadership suggests that Berlin might be overcoming some of its power reticence. And, the implicit anti-Britishness that has long been a factor in German foreign and security policy has been evidenced by the effective exclusion of the EU member-states with Europe’s strongest financial market from Franco-German leadership of this first order European crisis.

Consequently, Berlin and London are now on collision course.  On 14 November both Chancellor Merkel and Prime Minister Cameron made speeches calling for fundamental reform of the EU.  However, whilst Merkel called for "...not less Europe, but more" and an overhaul of EU treaties to force fiscal union, Prime Minister Cameron called for the aviodance of "grand plans and utopian visions" and saw the future of the Union as having the "...flexibility of a network, not the rigidity of a bloc".  They meet soon; that should prove interesting. 

For all that history is only so eloquent when considering Germany and Germany’s place in Europe. Berlin’s leadership must therefore be given the benefit of the doubt so long as there is any doubt left about how Germany intends to exercise strategic influence. Germany is no longer ruled by the Kaiser or Hitler and the wars are now but distant memories. Germany is a model European democracy and shows no signs of wavering from a path set for it by the victorious allies.

But the question remains; a German Europe or a European Germany? Berlin will need to work hard to convince ALL Europeans that it knows the politically-correct answer to that most seminal of strategic questions, whatever the temptations for domination afforded by the Eurozone crisis, whatever the democracy-destroying expediency of the moment.

Julian Lindley-French

For the Fallen

London, 11 November, 2011. At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year I was in London in silence for two minutes remembering our war dead. I had the honour of addressing the Royal College of Defence Studies on British grand strategy - the organisation of large national means in pursuit of large national ends.

British politician Aneuran Bevan once famously said; “This island is almost made of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish in Great Britain at the same time.” My message was equally acute; for London to have simultaneously lost critical influence at a critical juncture at one and the same time with its key security partner Washington and its key economic partners via Berlin and Brussels is an act of perverse political genius no less profound.

Too often the British Tommy has paid the ultimate price and made the ultimate sacrifice filling the gap between Britain's ends and means. 1968 was the only year since the eighteenth century that a British serviceman or woman has not been lost on Crown service.  

Therefore, in fitting tribute to them and their comrades I will quote in full Lawrence Binyon::

“With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children, England mourns for her dead across the sea. Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit, Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal, Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres, There is music in the midst of desolation, And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young, Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow. They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted; They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again; They sit no more at familiar tables of home; They have no lot in our labour of the day-time; They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound, Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight, To the innermost heart of their own land they are known, As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust, Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain; As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness, To the end, to the end, they remain”.

Julian Lindley-French

Talking Tohoku in Tokyo

“Amateurs talk strategy; professional talk logistics”

General Omar Bradley, 1944

Tokyo, Japan. 10 November. What a city of uber-contrast. A concrete-scape beyond an eye’s leap that crawls and then creeps before eventually soaring and swooping around the old Imperial palace at its heart. This mega-city is periodically punctuated by serene oases of intimate greenery in which water; rock and flora tease the imagination back toward a Japan long gone. Escaping the Eurozone trouble bubble and the shallowness of a London reinventing daily ways to mask its political impotence I have come to a country where tragedy means something.

Tohoku, the hydra-headed disaster of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear plant catastrophe (not too strong a word) that on 11 March rent apart a swathe of Japanese society. Not the Greek tragedy/farce that passes for disaster in Europe, but a country that this year faced a freak of nature that no human defence could endure. What lessons we Europeans could learn from this great land about civil-military partnership.

The Richter 9-scale earthquake and subsequent 16 metre-high tsunami left 16000 confirmed dead across 3 prefectures, with 4000 still missing, and 20,000 rescued at a financial cost of some $309 billion. The Japanese Self-Defence Force (JSDF) deployed some 107,000 personnel rapidly in support of the civilian authority, some 50% of the force. The JSDF was supported ably by 117,000 US personnel and troops from a host of other regional powers in a model of co-operative large-scale disaster relief.

Strange then that I have just had the honour of addressing the hugely impressive annual International Symposium of the National Institute for Defence Studies (NIDS) about NATO’s failing efforts to make a civil-military partnership ‘work’. Following on from the Vice-Minister of Defence and General Oriki, the man who led the disaster relief, and preceding Brigadier-General Crowe, the Deputy Commander of US Forces, Japan I was struck by how the joint determination to create a “dynamic defence capability” sits in stark contrast to the defeatism and cynicism in European governments and militaries about making civil-military co-operation a reality. And yet, given the gap between forces and resources such synergy remain the future if Europe is to have any chance to influence its security environment. Rather, the petty-minded, strategy-free, process-led little politics of so many European capitals still affords bureaucratic vested interest every opportunity to get very little out of a very limited effort. Looking for a reason for a failure to grip the Eurozone fiasco? Look no further.

However, it was not the big stuff of strategy that I bang on about that made the real difference in Operation Tomodachi. It was a sound system for effective information-sharing supported by responsive logistics – getting the right people, in the right place at the right time. Sure there were failings and lacunae. Effective government and governance in the three North-East Japan prefectures had been to all intents and purpose paralysed. Transportation hubs had been wiped out. The JSDF had to invent a more joint approach to operations on the hoof and closer collaboration with the private sector would have enhanced the effort, not least with the Tokyo Electric Company, owner of the radiation-spewing Fukushima nuclear facility, which for 3 days failed to inform the Prime Minister’s Office of the full extent of the nuclear disaster. And yet the most telling event was the re-opening of tsunami-ravaged Sendai Airport one month after the tragedy opening the way for materiel and personnel to flood in.

Specifically, what came across from all the main speakers was a determination of all the main actors – civilian and military alike – to do whatever was necessary to get the job done. Flexibility, adaptability and creativity were the key. At one point blanket over-flight rights for Australian C-17s was provided simply by adapting tourism laws! The close working relationship between the JSDF and US Pacific Command (PACOM) built up over many years of exercising and joint experimentation was critical because it engendered those all important commodities – solidarity and above all trust.

Looking back at Europe from afar and its faltering efforts to create a meaningful civil-military partnership it is evident that the problem is not technical but as ever political. Nothing is possible in today’s Europe. Everything is too hard and too difficult. Afghanistan is failing, money is but a memory, strategy is but a distant dream. Sadly, I am now watching this malaise affect former advocates of partnership. Many are now slinking away from support fearful that their careers will be blighted by the paucity of strategic and technical ambition that is the stuff of the current crop of political mediocrities who lead us.

Talking tohoku here in Tokyo I am once again convinced that a strong civil-military partnership is central to what passes for European strategic culture and by extension that of NATO. It must be fought for and fought through the current morass of political nothingness that is can’t do Europe today.

Admiral Lord Fisher once famously said, “Gentlemen, there is no more money. Now is the time to think!” It might be worth a try. If you do not believe me, senior commanders, I invite you too to come to Tokyo and talk tohoku. You might learn something.

Julian Lindley-French

Solidarity: The Emptiest Word in Eurospeak

“The British can't understand Europe as they're from an island ... from an island you can't understand the subtleties of the European construction”.

President Nicholas Sarkozy, 4 November, 2011

Alphen, the Netherlands. 5 November. If the mythical European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) contained as many Euros as empty Eurospeak the Eurozone crisis would have been solved in a trice. Indeed, the two most meaningless words in the grand lexicon of Eurospeak are ‘strategy’ and ‘solidarity’ and I have heard more than enough of both over the past two days of G-Plenty. ‘Strategy’ has been so long lost to the bottomless pit of Euro-jargon that it now suffers a new meaning; to not know what to do, where to go or how. My university, Oxford, might wish to consider an Oxford Eurospeak Dictionary to explain to the former European voter the real meaning of such gibberish.

However, the emptiest word by far in Eurospeak is ‘solidarity’. They are at it again. Peter Altmeier, a German MP close to Chancellor Merkel, called on Britain to show ‘solidarity’ with the Eurozone by contributing more British taxpayers to the EFSF, whilst at the same time ruling out more money from the German taxpayer. French President Nicholas Sarkozy was plain insulting to the British in response to a question posed at Cannes by a BBC journalist. “The British can't understand Europe as they're from an island ... from an island you can't understand the subtleties of the European construction”. In Yorkshire, Monsieur le President, someone might call you an arrogant toe-rag for that kind of stupid and prejudiced statement. What we British do understand is rubbish when we hear it! Indeed, it is precisely because we British do understand the ‘subtleties’ of your European ‘construction’ that we are not right now up to our necks (only our elbows) in your mess.

The Germans and French use solidarity a lot; normally when they are defending their national interests to the hilt and often at the expense of we British. Indeed, the one thing that neither France nor Germany have ever offered Britain is solidarity. Germany actively worked against Britain in the early 1990s to force London out of the infamous ‘snake’, the precursor to the Euro at a similar moment of economics-defying politics. Over the past decade neither France nor Germany has shown any solidarity with the British in Afghanistan, with the result that as of this morning 388 British soldiers are dead. Our lads have done too much of the dying for ‘Europe’. But it has been always thus.

What thanks do we get? At the 26 October Eurozone summit Germany and France consigned the British citizen to that of a second-class European citizen through an ‘enhanced’ form of ‘integration’ from which the second biggest paymaster of the EU will be excluded. I think that is what Berlin and Paris call ‘democracy’, the third emptiest and most over-used word in Eurospeak.

So, let us get back to real reality (not the Euro version). The reason that the Eurocrisis is daily deepening is that for too long Eurospeak and the empty politics behind it has polluted economic reality. Germany and France are still trying to solve this crisis politically rather than economically. Eurospeak has thus become the problem as it underpins the alternative reality that created this mess in the first place.

Economic reality is simple; Greece must default and be removed from the Eurozone, supported thereafter by all of us via the IMF; the northern, western European taxpayer (me) must be clobbered so that the EFSF can save Italy and the rest; and the European Central Bank must be empowered to administer my money with the likelihood that more Euros will need to put into the system (I think they call it quantitative printing or ink inflation – something like that). Or, the Euro must fail. As a Dutch taxpayer I can see the train wreck heading towards me but what from what I can see rather than the brake being applied a committee meeting is underway.

Now, as a Briton, I know I am going to have to contribute more in some way because it is in my country’s interest to do so. However, before Britain does indeed contribute more of its own debt to the crisis I would rather like to see a real strategy in place as PR-Meister Cameron is about to announce said increase.  It will be via the IMF and in support of individual Eurozone members and it will cost each British household around about €2000.  And this at a time of real financial suffering.  That is real solidarity M. le President and Mr Altmeier.

My respect for the French and German people remains absolute – my annoyance is not with my fellow European sufferers. Our solidarity is real. The problem is the increasingly dismissive and arrogant European elite. Indeed, if you M. le President really understood ‘solidarity’ and acted in its spirit perhaps you might also better understand the European ‘construction’, as you put it. Maybe solidarity means something different in German and French?

So, if you want our money stop using the silly solidarity word if you do not mean it. We Britons know that when we are in trouble you will of course vanish. And please, M. le President, we know you do not like us, but if you expect us to pay please show a little more respect. We did after all liberate you French twice last century…from the Germans.

Julian Lindley-French

The Strategic Influence Game 4: Utterly Entangled America

"Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations — entangling alliances with none." Thomas Jefferson

Alphen, the Netherlands. 3 November. As the G-Plenty and Not-so-Plenty meet in Cannes a big month beckons for the United States. One month hence will be the seventieth anniversary of Pearl Harbor which brought a formal and abrupt end to 1930s American isolationism. December 2011 will also see the withdrawal of US combat forces from Iraq. One year hence the US presidential elections will take place. Obama’s first term has been dominated by extracting America from Afghanistan and Iraq and NOT dealing with debt and financial disaster. Obama’s second-term (the presidential candidates on the US Right are hopelessly split and/or less than compelling) will face déjà vu all over again; how to deal with a break-out WMD state in the Middle East. The way in which Washington deals with the coming Iranian Crisis will do much to set American grand strategy on its twenty-first century course.

The International Atomic Energy Authority’s (IAEA) is about to issue a report that Iran is speeding up efforts to enrich weapons-grade uranium.  This will lead to crisis with Israel. It is thus strategic make your mind up time for America – continue as a somewhat less super-power in a constrained leadership role or join its feckless and hopeless European allies in a) global isolationism; and b) selling the family silverware to the dodgy dealers over the horizon to pay for debt obesity.

Strategy is the preserve of the relatively weak. Ten years ago there were a few in Washington (an influential few) who were mad enough to believe that America the Mighty was so strong that strategy need simply be a shopping list of America’s wants in the world. And, whilst Twain-esque reports of America’s strategic demise are hopelessly premature the United States today looks like Britain in 1911 – immensely strong on paper and yet spread thin the world over.

America has been a liberating power, but one that has always and rightly had a keen sense of the national interest. Since 1945 that power has been sustained by a strong sense of internationalism, more often than not supported by European allies the freedom from tyranny of which the US has been the ultimate guarantor. American internationalism has also been sustained by clear economic benefits for the American people. However, something profound has changed that is evident at Cannes; the globalisation which emerged from American free market internationalism is no longer working overwhelmingly in America’s favour.

Furthermore, since 911 American prestige has badly been damaged by two inconclusive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Although nothing like as costly as World War Two or the Vietnam War this loss of prestige has enabled China to turn economic strength into political influence. Beijing is now on the way to becoming the new peer competitor of America in a new bipolar world. Taken together globalisation and China’s emergence on the crest of an economic bow-wave faces Washington with the most profound of strategic choices; retreat back into a form of neo-isolationism or re-commit to a new form of leadership.

The latter option begs a question; leadership of what? By now Europe should have joined the US in a form of bipolar leadership of the West in the world. Instead, Europe is retreating ever deeper into Euro-isolationism as Germany and France seek ever more incompetent ways not to deal with the Eurozone crisis. Britain? America’s hitherto ‘special relation’ has become a very little ‘power’ retreating from influence both in Europe and the wider world with a fractured society trapped in self-defeating political correctness. What price Europe for the continued commitment of America to Europe’s stability? Japan is a possible partner but is recovering from an enormous natural disaster and twenty years of stagflation. India is being India - non-aligned.

American strategic leadership will thus be far more complex than hitherto making decisive action against Iran very dangerous. Power-shift is the elephant in the room at Cannes. Like it or not the centre of gravity of future American power will be the Asia-Pacific region with the US cast as great stabiliser.  Challenges will be for the mostpart indirect with new and old technologies used to offset American power, often in league with non-state actors, such as Al Qaeda – be it cyber-attack or WMD proliferation. And, the Middle East will continue to boil as the Arab Spring creates as many autocrats as democrats.

Faced with such complexity American leadership could well be an oxymoron with the role of traditional diplomacy ever more important, with coalitions rather than formal alliances being the stuff of American foreign and security policy.  This will in turn require a big shift in the balance between American diplomacy and force. That will be a difficult call for any future American president to make. Political culture, deficit-reduction and pork barrel politics all tend to undermine American soft power. The iron triangle of political funding, defence industries and the armed forces still exerts undue influence in Washington fifty-one years after President Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex.

It was Winston Churchill who said that, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.” Let us hope so. For over sixty years American leaders have more or less ignored Jefferson’s famous dictum to avoid entangling alliances. If America is ever going to heed Jefferson’s warning now is the deficit-ridden, withdrawal moment it is going to happen. Iran will prove the test – pre-empt an Iranian bomb by attacking it; build a political coalition that somehow prevails upon Tehran or simply live with the Iranian bomb and constrain a frightened Israel.

Tough call.

Julian Lindley-French

Publish, Plagiarise, Pressure...or Perish. What is Wrong with Academia?

Alphen, the Netherlands. 1 November. What is wrong with academia?  Some 30 papers have been corrupted by false data, with at least 14 doctoral theses compromised and 150 papers going back to 2004 now to be investigated. The committee set up by the universities of Tilburg and Groningen, and which published their interim report yesterday, call the scientific fraud “considerable and shocking”. Professor Dr Diederik Stapel, Professor of Cognitive Social Psychology and Dean of Tilburg’s School of Social and Behavioral Sciences is today at the centre of a storm that has made headline news on both television and in the newspapers here in the Netherlands. So is my wife for she is the Science Communications Officer of Tilburg University and has had to handle much of the fall-out from what is an all-round failure of academic ethics and rigour. But how isolated a case is this?

In my many years sitting at the cusp between academia and policy the widening gap between the two has made my own posture increasingly uncomfortable. The culture of publish or perish which seems to have been the root cause of Stapel’s alleged corruption has been eating away at academic rigour for years. The literature is now full of meaningless and pointless dross just so that arbitrary publication targets can be met, so that arbitrary funding decisions can be made.  I would not wish to cast aspertions on all my colleagues as there are still some very fine minds at work in academia. However, very few academics now undertake rigorous evidence-based research. The pressure to publish, on both students and academics, is now so great that less than academic tendencies are commonplace.

The number of times I have seen my own work plagiarised is frightening. A few years ago I attended the London launch of a major report on European defence. As I began to read the report my mouth dropped open; the first five pages were lifted directly from a report for the Bertelsmann Stiftung that I had authored. Not surprisingly I complained. Recently a student of mine submitted a paper that contained extensive extracts from one of my own publications with no attempt made to attribute the source. Now, whilst I would not of course question her taste or persipicacity, I did rather question her sanity. Indeed, it was so blatant a case that I simply had the paper re-worked before I would begin to consider it. She seemed to have assumed that because she was paying for the course she had also purchased the assessment. I fear that as universities become ever more desperate for money this kind of ‘misunderstanding’ will only increase.

But it is not over-ambitious students in a hurry that I worry about. From afar the Stapel case reeks of the stink one gets when a profession becomes a closed shop. The professorial ethos of ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” is everywhere in academia. Professional ‘etiquette’ means that professors very rarely question each other’s work and accept the self-serving and often incomprehensible rubbish that now abounds. This retreat from academic rigour has been reinforced by governments (and notoriously the European Commission) which too often subject universities and think-tanks to project funding. ‘Research’ is only commissioned that provides the answers the paymasters want to hear.

This in turn has tended to reinforce the left and left of centre orthodoxy and political correctness from which every western European university now suffers. All research is political in some form but today too many academics at major universities are in effect self-selected. The congregating of like-minded individuals simply adds to the creeping authoritarianism of political orthodoxy.  If 'reality' is uncovered that suggests an alternative thesis it must be ignored or explained away and its authors sidelined.

However, what has become really insidious is the way professors exploit their students. There is some evidence in the report that Stapel intimidated his students into accepting his corrupt data for years until a few of them were brave enough to speak out. I can imagine just how he got away with this. Too many professors behave like medieval aristocrats; insisting that they are above supervision, handing out patronage by hinting at future careers if students agree to undertake huge amounts of work; and ‘authoring’ subsequent publications which in reality are the fruits of others' labours. So many professorial publications are in fact written by others, only for the 'other' then to be discarded when it suits and left broken in the self-obsessed professorial wake. Burnt out careers and broken people are everywhere in academia. The whole system simply encourages the self-obsessed, the ego-maniac and the downright unfair.

Professor Stapel deserves all he will get for the damage he has done to a lot of promising young people. However, I hope, just hope, that the academic gods will also hold a mirror up to themselves, both here in the Netherlands and elsewhere. Stapel is almost certainly the tip of a very grubby iceberg.

Publish, plagiarise, pressure...or perish. Academia needs a re-think.  It could start by awarding a medal to those brave students who had the courage to uncover this fraud.

Professor Dr Julian Lindley-French

No Taxation Without Representation!

"London is the centre of financial services in Europe. It's under constant attack through Brussels directives. It's an area of concern, it's a key national interest that we need to defend."


Prime Minister David Cameron, 29 October, 2011

The 26 October, 2011 Euro Summit Statement and the decision by the seventeen Eurozone countries to move towards ever deeper economic and fiscal integration will make Britain and the British people third or fourth class European citizens, after the likes of Belgium and Luxembourg. For the world’s fifth or sixth largest economy and Europe’s strongest military power Britain’s status in the EU was changed overnight from being one of the Big Three in an essentially inter-governmental structure, to being shut out of a German-led integrated system. To force the British people to go on paying for something with which the overwhelming majority of them do not agree with and for which they gain little or no benefit would be to subject a proud, old country to humiliation. That is not going to happen.

Figures supplied by Britain’s Office for National Statistics capture the extent of the unfairness to which Britain is now subject by its European partners. Britain is the second largest net contributor after Germany having injected some €10.5 billion in the EU in 2010. Britain’s gross contribution is also second to that of Germany at €22.4 billion, having leaped 74% since 2009. Some warn that Britain’s trade with Europe could be damaged if Britain left the EU, with some 40% of exports going to the EU. In fact, in 2010 Britain ran an enormous trade deficit with the EU of €53.1 billion, compared with a trade surplus of €11.7 billion with the rest of the world.  The average British household now pays around three hundred euros per year to the EU, which for many is close to the monthly cost of keeping a roof over their head.

The Eurozone breakout of 26 October was thus more than a technical decision to save the Euro. It saw the beginning of a fundamental shift of power inside the EU in favour of Germany and the European Commission. This power shift is manifested by French and German-inspired attacks on the City of London by the European Commission, Britain most important strategic economic asset.  Berlin and Paris are moving to strengthen both Frankfurt and Paris as financial centres at London’s expense. Prime Minister David Cameron warned on 29 October, 2011 that the City of London is under constant attack from EU. He described Britain’s finance industry as a “key national interest”, and warned that the single market must be kept open to non-Eurozone members.

Cameron went on, “Sometimes it’s necessary to have regulation but the regulation is badly drafted, badly formed and it doesn’t necessarily reflect what large financial centres like London need. And, of course, all countries in Europe pursue their national interests. Would the French and Germans like a larger share of financial services in Paris and Frankfurt? Of course they would. I want to make sure we keep them in London”.

Specifically, Cameron is deeply concerned about proposals from the European Commission which are supported by France and Germany which would impose a tax on all financial transactions in the EU to help fund the way out of the Eurozone crisis. Not only would this hinder London’s ability to compete with other global financial markets such as New York, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Tokyo but it would effectively mean that the British were contributing 80% to tax to cover debt in a Eurozone of which they are not a member.

The power shift implicit in the Statement is truly historic and historians will come to see it thus. Germany is about to win the 140 year systemic struggle for the domination of Europe.  Given Berlin is the big winner the Germans should perhaps not complain too loudly about the price for solving the crisis as the Euro has done so much for so long to fuel Germany’s export-led growth.  The single currency has in effect acted as a customs union built around Germany thus offsetting the high costs of German production.

Equally, London also has responsibility for the position in which it finds itself. Ever since joining what was then the European Economic Community (EEC) back in 1973 London sold ‘Europe’ to its people as a free-trade zone and nothing more. Indeed, Britain has been trying to hold back the development of a more political and social Europe ever since. In ever more desperate attempts to reconcile what was promised to the British people with the political moves in Europe towards deeper integration London has sought opt-outs, which has simply removed Britain ever further from decision-making in Europe. ‘Brussels’ is now an utterly hated word across much of Britain and unfairly so. Ironically, the most important opt-out was the decision not to join the Euro for the simple fact that Britain was right about the inherent contradictions in the structure of the currency driven as it was by political ambition rather than sound economic fundamentals.

So, where can the British go? In fact Britain remains one of the world’s most advanced economies and by dint of being outside the Euro has better prepared itself for the globalised market than any of the Eurozone countries. Indeed, the Eurozone crisis is the world’s first globalisation crisis of the developed world caused precisely because the Eurozone tried and failed to seal itself off from the consequences of globalisation. It is no coincidence that David Cameron spent the period immediately after the Eurozone summit in Australia with the leaders of the Commonwealth amongst the fifty-three members of which are some of the world’s up and coming economies, most notably India.

And then of course there is the Anglosphere. Ten years of bruising engagements by the British military in Iraq and Afghanistan has seen some eight hundred British soldiers killed and some three thousand badly wounded. It has also demonstrated to the British that when it comes to real danger for all the talk of European defence London can expect little solidarity from its European partners. Family are the only ones that can be trusted; America, Australia, Canada amongst others. The British have done too much of the dying for Europe these ten years past. Libya? Too little, too late and it is seen by many in London merely as a vehicle for re-election seeking President Sarkozy to grandstand. There may even be benefits for both sides as a Europe without Britain can finally get on and do what it pretends it has always wanted, but which it also pretends the British have always frustrated, not least a common defence policy.

No Taxation Without Representation was first used in the run up to the American Revolution against Britain by Reverend Jonathan Mayhew in 1750 Boston. James Otis then said that "taxation without representation is tyranny”. What was right in 1750 remains just as right in 2011.

The day will now come when Britain leaves the EU and it will be perhaps the saddest day of my life.

Julian Lindley-French

A Bridge too Far: Britain Must Now Leave the European Union

There will be “a further strengthening of economic convergence within the euro area, …improving fiscal discipline and deepening economic union, including exploring the possibility of limited Treaty changes”.

Herman van Rompuy, President of the European Council, 27 October, 2011

Alphen, the Netherlands. 27 October, 2011. You will forgive your faithful blogonaut a third blog in a week on the same topic – the Eurozone crisis. However, the mission of this blog is to peer through the political murk and the fog of jaw behind which the Euro-Aristocracy and their faithful Eurocrats love to hide and bear witness to real strategic change. Before me I have the Euro Summit Statement of 26 October, 2011 (strange how it was issued at 0400 hours CET 27 October but is dated 26 October). Historians will come to regard this document as perhaps the most important since the EU’s founding 1957 Treaty of Rome. A political Rubicon was and had to be crossed last night by the Eurozone countries towards political and economic integration, but Britain for a whole host of reasons cannot, nor will she ever follow.

Quite simply the statement marks the moment when the countries of the inner-union broke once and for all with those of the outer-union. For someone who has spent much of his adult life believing in the essential unifying mission of Europe it is with the most profound sadness that I now call on Britain to leave the European Union. To save Greece, Britain has been sacrificed and given the stakes there was little alternative. However, for Britain to stay now would simply heap humiliation upon cost without influence and my proud, old, badly-led country deserves better than that.

As ever the devil is in the detail of Union-speak. It is not the headlines that matter, although as a Dutch taxpayer I am the one who is really going to take the now infamous ‘haircut’…and I will be bald for many years to come. Europe's Dear Leaders are simply inventing ways to avoid saying that. Private banks that hold Greek debt will write-off 50% of their returns; the ‘firepower’ of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) will be increased from €440bn to €1 trillion (it will be €2 trillion within a year); and European banks will be required to raise about €106bn in new capital by June 2012...much more is needed. 

The key breaker with Britain is Annex 1 (the truly dangerous strategic bits of EU-speak are always hidden in the ‘language’ of annexes): “Ten measures to improve the governance of the euro area”. There will be twice yearly Euro-summits at which the Eurogroup meet under the leadership of a President of the Euro Summit who will be ‘designated’ by the Heads of State and Government (HofSG) of the Eurozone. The “Eurogroup will ensure ever closer coordination of the economic policies and promoting financial stability”. One can tell how weak is Britain’s influence as whoever writes this stuff is clearly not English. The non-Euro members and the European Parliament will be “kept informed” by the Euro-summit president, which will be nice.

There will be a Eurogroup work-plan towards deeper integration drawn up by a Eurogroup Working Group, “drawing on expertise provided by the Commission” which will be chaired by yet another “full-time Brussels-based President”…who will be different from the President of the Euro Summit. Still with me? Fantastically, the Onion will soon have five presidents – more high-paid jobs for the Euro-Aristocracy and their Eurocrat friends. What is the collective? A plethora of presidents, or merely a pain? Critically, the ECOFIN Commissioner, Head of the Omission's Economic and Finance Committee; the President of the Euro-Summit; the President of the European Commission; and the President of the Eurogroup shall be responsible for “communicating the decisions of the Eurogroup”. That should be clear then.

Make no mistake for all the Byzantine complexity and secrecy beloved of the democracy-defying Brussels Mafia this moment is the decisive break with Britain. London had an opportunity to shape this moment but woke up too late and did too little.  London will of course do what it has always done at such moments of retreat. Play down the significance of the statement, assure the British people that its impact will be minimal, and that assurances and opt-outs have been secured. There will be failure-masking talk of leading the non-Eurozone members towards a counter-balancing bloc. History will prove that London’s ‘assurances’ will be as empty as the people who make them. The simple fact is that Britain is the big loser (again) from the Euro-crisis. My old country must now take its chances with the wider world which represents over 60% of Britain’s trade. Bring on the Anglosphere!

The statement marks the decisive end of the fifty year struggle between a sort of ‘intergovernmental’ Europe and a sort of integrated Europe. The latter is not at all what the British people signed up to. To stay further would be to pay for someone else’s party and that would be unfair. A German-led inner core will now make decisions with implications far beyond mere issues of economy. Economics is after all power and Britain has no part of it.

Therefore, I call upon the Euro-Aristocracy on both sides for once to do the right thing; prepare for the departure of Britain from the European Union and recognise that Britain has trading rights under the World Trade Organisation that must be respected.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill; this is not the end of the beginning, but rather the beginning of the end for Britain in the European Union.

It is a bridge too far for Britain…and we all know what that means.

Julian Lindley-French

Euro-Crisis: A Little Bit Pregnant, David?

Alphen, the Netherlands. 25 October. Right now your faithful blogonaut should be on a Royal Navy warship somewhere off Europe. No, we are not planning an invasion, but it might come to that. Instead, I am in bed writing this missive on my steam-powered lap-top. Yesterday, having gone through the Eurotunnel, and back into Blighty as far as the ancient town of Rye, I had to turn back laid low by the Dutch Disease – the dreaded lurgy. The long run home through enemy territory – Calais, then Dunkirk and up to the Belgian border was touch and go. But in the end I made it flaps down with seconds to spare, in spite of some dense flak in the form of Belgian traffic near Antwerp and eventually belly-flopped into bed. Gallantly and valiantly I had decided to abort the mission and head home in the national interest, not wishing to infect what is left of Her Majesty’s navy. There is however some good news. Being full of flu for once my head is clear to think.

PR-Meister Cameron is trying to create a position for Britain in the Onion that simply no longer exists - being half in Europe. This Eurozone crisis will end that absurdity and confront Britain with the most profound of choices. We are all moving inexorably towards that moment. Last night almost half of Cameron’s Conservative Members of Parliament voted for a referendum to be put to the British people. The question on offer would be simple; should Britain stay in or leave the European Onion? In doing so they voted expressly against the wishes of PR-Meister Cameron. Rightly in my view, the PR-Meister made the point that now is not the time for such a question to be placed before the good citizenry and honest burghers of Britain. He sympathised with his rebels by suggesting that the British Parliament was "ever more impotent" as the "tentacles" of the European Onion "intruded into more and more areas of national life". The time for reform was at hand, he said…but not just yet.  What matters now is that we all pull together to avert what is a European crisis of the first order.  But the day of reckoning approacheth!

Time will prove the obvious; the PR-Meister is defending the indefensible.  On the one hand he believes the British interest is best served by staying in the Onion but on the other he is promising his revolting back-benchers that a "fundamental change" in the UK's relationship with Europe will soon take place. How?

The contradictions in Cameron’s position are indeed profound. First, the political space Britain now occupies in the Onion is eroding fast. Given events being in the Onion but not in the Euro makes little sense now, let alone a year hence when the consequences of this moment unfold. Logically given London's current position all that is going to happen is that the British will inevitably incur more cost for less influence.  Second, “repatriating powers” from Brussels will not free London from the grip of the Onion. With the European Omission’s powers inevitably strengthened Britain will still be ever more subject to a whole host of European Directives rightly designed for and by the political and monetary core of Europe. The PR-Meister will of course demand ‘opt-outs’ but all these ever do is ensure Britain has next to no influence over the strategic track of the Onion. It is precisely Britain's penchant for opt-outs that over time has led to the loss of critical influence in and over the Onion.  Third, fiscal and economic integration will lead inevitably to even further political integration in areas such as home affairs and defence which are a vital British interest but over which London will have no say. Fourth, having promised no more British cash to solve the Euro-crisis PR-Meister Cameron’s call to us all to douse the fire in the neighbouring house will mean just that – more British cash.

Britain’s real position was captured by President Sarkozy at the EU-summit this week. “We are sick of you criticising us,” the French President said, “…and telling us what to do.” Note the ‘us’. Britain simply is not regarded as one of 'them'.  So much for solidarity. 

Sadly, PR-Meister Cameron’s position on the Euro-crisis is symptomatic of the muddled and contradictory strategic thinking at the heart of the British Government.  Indeed, over Europe Cameron finds himself in the political equivalent of being a little bit pregnant. But here’s the real tragedy – so is Ed Milliband, the Labour Party leader and Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats. Whatever one might think of the Tory rebels at least they see how ridiculous Britain’s European ‘policy’ has become. It is about to get an awful lot worse.  Britain is in the worst possible of all strategic/policy positions - no influence/ high cost.

To properly influence events Britain must be at the core of the Onion. Or, to avoid the costs Britain must leave the Onion. There is no middle ground. In other words, Britain must join the Euro, or leave the Onion. It is as simple and straightforward as that.

Talking of symptoms – where’s the Lemsip?

Julian Lindley-French

Der Plan and the Onion: Under New Management

“Those who have checked improvement, because it is an innovation, will one day be compelled to accept innovation when it has ceased to be an improvement”.

Lord Palmerston, 1848

Alcala de Henares, Spain. 23 October, 2011. There is something vaguely disturbing watching a Brussels European Onion summit from afar; especially when the topic is how to waste even more of my money. Watching a few with an awful lot of money in offshore tax havens (the Euro-Aristocracy) instructing a few others on huge tax-free salaries (the Onionistas of the European Omission) how to spend my money leads me to paraphrase Oscar Wilde; it is the unspeakable in pursuit of the too-taxable to save the hides of the responsible. 

Der Plan to save the Euro, well-intentioned and necessary as it is, effectively re-orders the political map of Europe and confirms once and for all who really calls the shots; Berlin.  London? Nowhere, as usual.

I am writing this missive beneath the eaves of Cervantes’s home on a sun-draped street in central Spain with Chancellor Merkel now cast in the role of Don Quixote and trying-to-be-re-elected President Sarkozy as her faithful squire Sancho Panza.  In fact, Der Plan is a stroke of German genius; the Euro-Aristocracy will get the banks to bear much of the cost of the Greek tragedy whilst simultaneously using my money to save the banks. Those who have been calling for decisive leadership have now got it – German leadership. Come next week the Onion will be under new management – German management. 

Here in Alcala one sees the real human cost of this crisis on the proud, honourable and decent people of Spain who have come so far since they rid themselves of Western Europe’s last tin-pot dictator Franco back in 1975. Der Plan will leave the heirs of Philip II with little alternative but to abandon principle and accept what they are given – orders. They are too deep in debt to do otherwise and the soon-to-be new government will be forced to take the cheapest option on offer. It is a sign of things to come

Der Plan, I am told, will also contain the German joke. The powers of the European Omission will be extended to ensure proper management of national budgets. I told you it was a good one. Physician, heal thyself, I hear you utter in despair. It is like putting an arsonist in charge of the Pentagon. Oh sorry, we tried that. Not that Germany…and, er, France. has any alternative and neither Berlin…nor, er, Paris see this as a power grab. It is leadership that has been thrust upon them, but such is life.  Nor will said leadership come cheap…either for Germans or the rest of us in the Onion-zone.

Der Plan could also prove a tad tricky for the British, particularly if London ever again wakes up (unlikely) and realizes that just because some woman from Lancashire is in ‘charge’ of EU foreign policy Britain does not control Europe. British PR-Meister David Cameron, has promised the British people a referendum if there are treaty changes pursuant to this stitch-up, er, sorry, Plan. Concerned about a vote in Parliament he even got arch anti-Onion William Hague to suggest that the British Parliament might be a ‘distraction’ for the PR-Meister at this time. Don’t you just love the Euro-Aristocracy?

Many commentators, including your faithful blogonaut, have characterized the choices facing the Eurozone as state up or break up. To Brussels or to de-Brussels; that has been the question. In fact there is a Third Way (oh no, not another one!) hybrid integration, which is the second German joke. It goes something like this. Germany will lead the way towards much deeper and intense political and economic co-operation between the larger member-states of the Euro-Onion-Zone, supported by Sancho Panza, er sorry, France. If they can get away with it the little onions outside will be offered ‘guarantees’ about future access to Berlin, sorry, Brussels. However, in return they will also agree to pay to fix the Euro, although every effort will be made to avoid telling their taxpayers. Quietly, the European Omission will be invited to push towards deeper fiscal onion with a particular emphasis on using the crisis to promote political integration via the smaller European states (they are all broke anyway).

PR-Meister Cameron might thus be induced to go along with the second German joke and present it to the British as a ‘technical’ adjustment of little import to the British thus, of course, not requiring a referendum. The British people might after all get the referendum answer wrong; just like their Danish, French, Dutch and Irish confreres before them.   It will be of such little import to the British that a series of other minor 'adjustments' will follow soon thereafter.   The Omission, freed to bring more power unto itself, will issue a whole array of entangling Directives of financial regulation mainly aimed at the City of London. This will strengthen Frankfurt at the expense of City and eventually break the all-important link between the City and Wall Street. A special relationship will be established between Germany and the European Omission that will then lock German leadership into the Onion.  That cannot be good for Britain, nor Paris, as the latter soon finds itself replaced as Sancho Panza by the Omission, nor indeed for Berlin.

In fact, I have no particular problem with the leadership of Europe of a modern, democratic Germany.  It is a fact of power life.   However, what is at stake in Brussels concerns the checks and balances that need to be in place to ensure sound leadership. Britain’s effective absence from influence over this crisis is leading inevitably to a re-ordering of state and institutional power in Europe that is not in Britain’s or in anyone else’s interest.

Palmerston’s first dictum of British foreign policy was simple – London must do whatever necessary to prevent a dominant power on the Continent of Europe. It is time the British remembered that – crisis or no crisis.

But do not despair. There is always the European Parliament there to prevent any abuse of power. Baarf! Baarf!

Perhaps I should be quoting Goethe!

Julian Lindley-French

The Strategic Influence Game 3: The Loser

“A man in peril of drowning catchest whatsoever cometh next to hand… be it never so simple a stick”

Sir Thomas More, 1534

Alphen, the Netherlands, 17 October. Strategy is the art of gaining the greatest influence at least cost. For at least a generation the British elite have specialised in gaining the least influence at the greatest cost – be it in Europe, the transatlantic relationship or the wider world. Why?

The factors are many but put simply Britain’s political elite have made just about every strategic mistake there was to make over the past fifty years or so – apologising for Britain abroad, apologising for old Britain at home. Today an impotent, rudderless political class lacks strategic imagination and is incapable of strategic leadership. All too conscious of failure the state is resorting to creeping authoritarianism and political correctness to quash the concerns of middle Britain about the consequences of decadent decline; the excessive influence of special interest groups over government – be it big business or minorities. Common sense and the will of the majority have been cast asunder.  Sadly, it is hard to imagine Britain surviving the next fifty years. Surveying the wreckage there is very little for Britons to be proud of.

The strategic political correctness that suffuses the British elite is evident in British foreign policy - the longest post-Imperial apology in history.  Keeping foreigners happy at almost any cost is not national strategy. The retreat from international realism has been reinforced by a retreat from domestic realism.  The constant and failed ideological experimentation on the British people by both the political left and right has led to a society so fractured that all government can do today is talk of Britain as a series of ‘communities’.

Abroad so far and fast is Britain's retreat from real strategic influence that soon London will no longer be able to mask systemic failure by appealing to and exploiting fading symbols of past glories. The European crisis will reveal the extent of Britain’s retreat from influence; ever more cost for ever less influence - the very antithesis of sound strategy.

London’s retreat from strategic influence was painfully apparent at a meeting at which I spoke last week on transatlantic defence relations.  As ever the British unable to talk strategy preferred to talk cost and capabilities, or rather the lack of them. My American colleagues tried hard to be sympathetic eschewing what they saw as London's doom and gloom by looking for new ways to cheer the British up in this age of aggravated austerity. And yet even as I spoke I knew in my heart that the strategic depression that pervades all and every corridor of Whitehall would ensure nought would come of it. London has given up, surrendered. Now resigned to being a very third rate power my once great country has become a strategic basket case.

This lack of duty and responsibility at the top of politics is particularly unfair on the proud men and women who have worn the uniforms of the British armed forces with such distinction and who have put their lives on the line for a Britain that no longer exists. Rather, they serve a political class so utterly self-obsessed and so lacking in any vision of what Britain could still achieve in this world if just for once they did what they are paid to do; lead. Sadly, British leadership today has been reduced to little more than political PR. Never have so many been so poorly led by so few so high.

Talking of which some fifty metres from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) where I was speaking British Defence Minister Dr Liam Fox was resigning. He had in his own words ‘blurred’ the distinction between private and public life. Allegedly he had given inappropriate access to a right-wing friend allegedly close to foreign powers who had also appeared frequently during Dr Fox’s official trips abroad allegedly implying an official status he had no right to. Sadly, there is probably more to come out but what is clear is that another landmark has been surrendered on the political road to public contempt.

No wonder the British people are abandoning politics in despair worn down by the essential hypocrisy and self-serving shallowness of contemporary British politics. The average life expectancy now of a British Defence Secretary is one year; that means a pool of six politicians are needed to get through one parliamentary term or six scandals - which is more or less the same thing these days. There is a joke there somewhere.

Why does this matter? For Britain the Fox resignation marks simply the latest example of a political elite too many of whom believe in a culture of entitlement. In this case it also shows a Coalition Government so ill-disciplined as to be virtually dysfunctional deep into perhaps the worst crisis since the Second World War. It also reveals a culture of deceit in government reinforced by a belief that the people cannot be trusted with the facts. Not because the facts are inimical to national security but because the facts are too embarrassing for political leaders.

As I walked through the Victorian grandeur of Whitehall I was struck by Britain’s past mocking Britain’s present.  Britain's little leaders – both left and right - in big rooms huddling behind their thin rhetorical facades awaiting the economic equivalent of the Blitz. Somewhere to the East something nasty is happening in ‘Europe’ (one is never really in Europe in Britain) about which apparently the British can do nothing but yet for which the British will pay.

London is thus drowning in a sea of rhetorical irrelevance between the capitals that do matter – Washington, Berlin and Paris. Britain is the big loser in the strategic influence game; no longer America’s ‘special relation’ and utterly marginalised in Franco-German efforts to save Europe from disaster.

What a little country Britain has become…and how cheap it sells itself.

Julian Lindley-French

The Strategic Influence Game 2: China in Space

"People should not be unfamiliar with strategy. Those who understand it will survive, those who do not understand it will perish"

Sun Tzu

Alphen, the Netherlands. 13 October. On 29 September at 1316 hours GMT a Long March 2F missile, China's latest lifter, powered into the sky carrying Tiangong-1, Beijing’s first space laboratory. Shortly, China will launch Shenzhou 8 which is designed to link up with the orbiting laboratory some 350 kilometres above the Earth. Soon the Long March 5 will be in service capable of putting a 50 ton payload into low Earth orbit. On 10 August China’s first aircraft carrier began its sea trials. Although it is a re-fitted former Soviet carrier and by no means state-of-the-art, taken together with China’s investment in submarines, a new ‘carrier-killer’ ballistic missile and stealth aircraft Beijing is clearly intent on entering the strategic Premiership of world power. This ambition should be clearly understood as such...with all that implies for the West. 

The timing is no mere coincidence. With the West mired in debt and much of Europe suffering strategic depression China is signalling that the Western world order is over. A challenge is being laid down to the United States and its allies that has enormous implications for NATO and European defence.  Critically, as China invests in expeditionary military capability much of Europe is effectively unilaterally divesting itself of said capabilities. This is not without a certain irony.  The loss of Europe’s conventional deterrent will almost certainly lead to much greater reliance in time on nuclear deterrence, something the legions of soft power disarmers in Europe might wish to consider.

Like Russia, China has a classical view of international politics. The state comes first – at home and abroad. Alliances, such as they exist, are designed merely to further the national strategic interest the aim of which is decisive influence over the neighbourhood and in time peer competitors. China’s grand strategy, which is euphemistically entitled Strategic Harmony, represents a world view that is essentially zero sum – a stronger China means a weaker America.

It is within than context that the space launch must be seen. Beijing clearly understands the psychological impact of power symbolism. With the Euro crisis accelerating Europe’s precipitate decline into strategic impotence China is establishing its psychological and ‘moral’ supremacy over much of the West. Strangely, Europe seems to be happily complicit in its own decline with little regard for the medium and long-term strategic consequences of its debt-dependency on China. This can be partly explained by the decadent nature of the debate in Europe about the ‘right’ to power. Indeed, so confused have Europeans become about the relationship between values and interests that the making of what might be termed European grand strategy is now nigh on impossible.

With Europe trapped in a self-defeating debate about the morality of power China is driving forward to make best use of it by re-defining the rules of the strategic game. China’s practice of power is to use the West against itself. By keeping the Yen artificially low China has used the West’s consumer obesity to force potential peer competitors into debt by effectively warping the global economy in its favour. The global economy is no level playing field.  When the US threatens retaliation (Europeans are of no consequence in Beijing) China concedes just enough ground to maintain the system in its favour.

The transfer of wealth from West to East generated by China’s effective capture of globalisation has been used in part to fund an increase in defence expenditure of some 247% over ten years. It has also been used to fund national prestige projects that help convince the world of China’s emergence as a superpower and mask the many contradictions that exist in the Chinese economy and its complex society.

Cleverly, the Beijing elite is strengthening its grip on power by offering China a new social contract.  The Communist Party agrees to draw back from overt interference in the lives of its citizens (to a point) and to promote improved living standards by embracing capitalism in return for the Party enjoying an untrammelled right to the exclusive exercise of power – both at home and abroad.

Having created this new social contract the reform pressure on the Party has by and large gone. However, the pressure on Beijing to exert Chinese power and influence abroad has increased.  It is a high-risk strategy.  So long as economic growth can be maintained the Party's freedom to act will be maintained. However, if China’s economy falters then the temptation to resort to narrow Chinese nationalism will become a very real danger.  Like Russia massive state power is concentrated in the hands of a relative few with a very traditional view of power and strategy.

When the 'correlation of forces' is deemed appropriate Beijing will certainly move to resolve the status of Taiwan and China's various territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Over time China will seek to further extend its strategic footprint further into the Indian Ocean and South Pacific. And, this process will inevitably lead to increased tension with the US as China seeks to remove the US from its sphere of influence.

Chinese strategy does not mean war is inevitable nor does it suggest that China is implicitly or explicitly warlike. China is merely the latest player of a geopolitical game that Europeans invented but have now forgotten. However, China’s determination to exert strategic influence is clear.  The power to influence is after all the purpose of its wealth creation.  This simple strategic truism of Chinese power and strategy will thus shape the strategic balance of power of the century to come.

Forays into deep space are merely steps on the Long March of Chinese national strategy on the road to a new strategic space.  China's strategic space.  Who or what will exert strategic influence over China?

Julian Lindley-French

The Strategic Influence Game 1: High Noon in the High North

"The view from Moscow is that...decline in Western power makes it more difficult for NATO to ignore co-operation with Russia”.

Keir Giles

Alphen, the Netherlands. 9 October. Who said geopolitics is dead? Ninety-four years on from the October 1917 revolution if anyone had any lingering illusions that Russia is a democracy they were surely dispelled by the 24 September announcement that President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin would simply swap jobs in 2012. Moscow likes to call Russia a ‘managed democracy’. In fact Russia is a micro-democracy of two…and even that is suspect.

President ‘elect’ again Putin will thus be in power until 2024…at least. Moscow also announced recently an increase in defence spending of some $66 billion over three years, which amounts to some 3% of the Russia’s gross domestic product. With the economy slowing, entrepreneurial activity being squeezed by an increasingly rapacious Kremlin and civil society all but moribund the Putin regime is beginning to look very much like the Brezhnev regime of Soviet old. Then, a self-serving regime sought to offset its lack of legitimacy at home by causing trouble in Russia’s self-designated ‘near abroad’.

The obvious flashpoint will be the Baltic States, the security of which must remain an absolute priority for NATO and the EU. Ukraine is also a worry. However, it is the mineral rich High North of Europe where an increasingly assertive Russia could perhaps play its most aggressive card.

Prime Minister Putin has repeatedly said that Russia intends to defend her strategic Arctic resources with military might. On 28 June the Russians conducted the third test-firing of the new Bulava submarine-launched ballistic missile in the Barents Sea. In July Foreign Minister Ivanov indicated that Moscow intended to extend her territorial borders in the Arctic by some 2 million square kilometres and that Russia intended to keep two brigades of troops at high readiness in the far north, rather than one. In August Russian Defence Minister Bulgarkov announced the decision to acquire 120 more of the highly-capable Iskander M nuclear missiles and that the first battalion had been deployed to the Northern Military District near St Petersburg. With a range in excess of up to 500 kilometres this deployment potentially threatens much of eastern and northern Europe.

Furthermore, the Norwegians are reporting a marked increase in sorties by Russian strategic bombers along the Norwegian coast with simulated attacks now a regular occurrence. On 7 July as the Russian and Norwegian foreign ministers exchanged ratification documents for the delimitation treaty on oil exploration and exploitation in the Barents Sea a Russian strategic bomber formation flew down the Norwegian coast. Nor are the Norwegians alone. Britain has noted a marked increase in Russian air and naval operations against British air and sea space.

Why does Russia do this? Much of this is traditional Russian bluster that anyone working on Russian strategy has come to know well. Some of it is Moscow’s frustration with a lack of progress on co-operation with the Alliance over missile defence and concerns about NATO’s intervention in Libya – Europe’s ‘near abroad’.  Russia sees the West as two-faced. However, strategic opportunism is also a factor.  Moscow’s strategy must thus be seen as a truism most Europeans seems to have forgotten; when one lacks power to make the rules strategic influence is not solely a function of being ‘nice’.

Fortunately for the West Russia is a clumsy exponent of the geopolitical art and too often permits frustration and the power parochial to trump strategy. In effect, it is déjà vu all over again. Declining oil and gas revenues, a hole in Russian Government finances and increasing defence budgets simply did not add up to a sustainable grand strategy – then or now. However, the impules to play Strong Russia is ever-present.

A stable relationship between Russia and the West is clearly in Moscow’s geo-political interest. One only has to look at a map to see the challenges Russia faces to its south and east. However, two things prevent that. First, whilst the 2010 NATO Strategic Concept hinted at better relations with Russia uncertainty, irresolution and retreat has made the West an uncertain partners/adversary. Second, the small Kremlin cabal that holds power have very parochial political and strategic agendas that by and large contradict financial and economic reality. Taken together the drivers of Russia’s strategy in the High North become clear.

Sooner or later there will be a domestic crisis in Russia. The Baltics and the Ukraine are too sensitive for overt adventurism but not the High North. Indeed, in spite of extant treaties boundaries and borders are sufficiently fuzzy for Moscow to exploit if it feels the need to send a message to the West without necessarily provoking a direct confrontation.  It is as ever a high-risk strategy.

In the iconic film High Noon local sheriff Will Kane (Gary Cooper) finds himself alone against a ruthless gang of outlaws. The little man standing firm against the bully eventually wins the day when the local citizenry finally realise that his fight is their fight. Think Finland, Norway, Sweden…and Russia.

High Noon in the High North? It could be coming soon to a screen near you.

Julian Lindley-French

Afghanistan Ten Years On

“They [the Haqqani Network] didn’t agree on several things, so the meetings were without any outcome. That’s why we are seeing now all these reactions and attacks going on.” A senior Afghan official.

Alphen, the Netherlands. 6 October. The first Afghan war of the twenty-first century is coming to an end as the first Afghan civil war begins. Ten years ago today the first Western soldiers were about to set foot on Afghan soil. The Taliban were then routed and it seemed likely that Al Qaeda would soon be denied the space that is Afghanistan from which to launch lethal attacks on Western civilians. Ten years on tens of thousands of Afghan lives have been lost; some 1700 American soldiers are dead alongside 400 of their British comrades, with many more dead from coalition nations. $21 billion of aid has been spent – much of it wasted or spirited away. And still the ‘strategic’ goal of a stable Afghanistan at peace with itself and the world seems an elusive dream. Yesterday’s War?

To talk privately to officials in European capitals Afghanistan has become the non-war. After all, they say, Bin Laden is dead, the Americans want out and Europeans in any case have more pressing matters, such as saving European society from financial ruin. They tell themselves that ‘they’ have done their best for what was after all another failed American war. Of course, in spite of all this no damage has been done to NATO which must now consider other futures.

There is much talk of transition – transition in to Afghan rule; transition out for the West. End 2014 is now the magic date when all major combat operations will end and by which time some grand political bargain will (of course) have been fashioned for Afghanistan. The West will (or course) stay in Afghanistan for years to come offering its aid and advice – members of a well-meaning international community. In reality only the Americans will be formally present on the ground and few at that.

The Afghans, ever-savvy fence-sitters, have not missed the meaning of the moment. The attacks by the Haqqani Network on Kabul are merely the first salvoes of a new power struggle between and within the Pashtun-led Taliban and Afghanistan’s ‘others’ over who will control what bit of the Afghan space, how and at what drug price – fuelled of course by generous doses of mischief from Afghanistan’s ever-interfering neighbours.

The race to fill the Afghan space with something that looks ever so slightly like a functioning Afghan state now enters its final, dangerous stage. What will the end look like? Will it be a formal handover of power with a nice flag-swapping military ceremony, or will it look more like the chaos of 1973 Saigon? Who knows? Whoever does know in Afghanistan?

2012 will be the pivotal year. The trick for the Americans will be to intensify peace-talks whilst fighting. Campaign momentum is everything,  Sadly, it is unlikely the Karzai Government will shift off its own fence. History suggests it will continue with some efforts to establish basic but acceptable levels of governance, whilst cutting informal deals with the members of the not-so-loyal opposition, and prepare to get out.

As ever, the situation in the south will be critical but not exclusively so. It is too early to tell if the Kandahar murder of Ahmed Wali Karzai in July 2011 has eased or complicated what passes for a political process in Afghanistan. The Pashtun represent 42% of the population but are by no means a unified body and whilst they are the political centre of gravity in Afghanistan their appeasement will only lead to conflict with the Tajiks (27%) Hazara (9%) and Uzbeks (9%).

The 2014 state of the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police will thus be the true test of the West’s legacy. It is in them the West must now focus its main, last effort. Will they be able to act as a unifying national force? Will they be strong enough for Kabul to exert real control over Afghanistan? Or will they be just strong enough to spare the West’s blushes on departure? The nature of the West's departure depends on the answers to these questions.

It is not Switzerland that is being so painfully constructed in the Hindu Kush but chaos still beckons if we simply walk away. Ten years on all of us in some way engaged in the campaign - from the loftiest politician to the humblest squaddie or grunt - need to grip the importance of this moment. If not, the sacrifice will have been in vain and history will condemn those on whose inattentive watch they perished.

Yesterday’s War?

Julian Lindley-French

Euro-Crash! Now, Britain! Now's Your Time!

“I never worry about action, but only inaction”

Winston Churchill

Alphen, The Netherlands. 3 October, 2011. At the climax of the Battle of Waterloo Napoleon’s Imperial Guard tried to force the road to Brussels.  The Brigade of Guards was waiting in ambush. “Now Maitland! Now’s your time!” Wellington thundered. Immediately the Guards emerged from the long grass and fired volley after volley into the Old Guard until for the first time it broke and ran. The Battle of Waterloo was won and Brussels was saved. It is time again for Britain to save Brussels...from itself.

Throughout Europe’s long and turbulent history the English/British have always been the guarantor of Europe's stability. The British have stepped in at critical moments of crisis either to prevent an overweening neighbour from dominating the Old Continent or to prevent the worst excesses of an unhinged ideology. It is a mark of Britain’s decline and the lack of leadership at the top of power in London that David Cameron and his team have been reduced to talking about the Eurozone crisis as if a) it is ‘nuffing to do with us, guv’; b) something to be swept under London’s increasingly threadbare political carpet; and/or c) wailing like some latter day Cassandras from the rapidly eroding margins.

The bottom-line is this; as Europe’s second or third largest economy, biggest financial market and Europe’s most capable military power it is precisely at this moment of existential crisis for the EU that Britain must show its traditional genius for pragmatic leadership…or leave the EU. That is effectively the choice on offer to London. No ‘ifs’ or ‘buts’.

Britain still has real political and popular influence over here but it is fast waning. My Dutch neighbours are puzzled by Britain’s impotence, and not a little offended by it. Where is the country that twice in the last century saved Europeans from servitude? The village in which I live was liberated by a huge British-led army that swept through here in 1944. Much of the democratic shape of modern Europe is down to Britain’s leadership. People are again looking to Britain and Britain is failing them.

The good news is that Britain has not had such an opportunity to lead for at least a generation. For my Dutch neighbours it is precisely because Britain is not in the Euro that Britain should lead. People all around me are suddenly volunteering the belief that Britain was right after all – the Euro as conceived back in the 1990s simply does not work and never will. And yet, more or much more Brussels seem to be the options on the table and the Dutch, that most European of nations, have no appetite for more Brussels.

Britain thus needs a plan to return the EU from whence it came; to enable Europe’s democratic nation-states to influence better together today’s hyper-competitive world under the leadership of Europe’s democratic nation-states. The mantra? More cooperation, less integration.

Britain’s plan would re-assert national sovereignty over key areas of European policy and strategy.  To that end Prime Minister Cameron should first join Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy to stabilise the immediate crisis, even if that costs money. In return Cameron must insist on the repatriatriation of key areas of policy, such as social, labour, foreign and security policy - even if that means a new treaty.  He should move decisively to end ever closer political union, i.e. more political integration, and insist that the European Commision's powers of decision-making be returned to the European Council  - where the will of the member-states is enacted.  The European Commission should be reduced to a much smaller enabling body with its powers of policy initiation removed.

The size and cost of all European institutions should be reviewed so that the damaging confusion over 'competence' is brought to a rapid end.  Many of the meaningless but expensive posts and structures created by the Lisbon Treaty should be scrapped; such as the European President and the European Foreign Minister and the hopelessly Byzantine European External Action Service (EEAS). The European Parliament should be reformed and reduced in size so that real politicians, i.e. national parliamentarians, rotate through a much smaller consultative institution that sits solely in Brussels. The pretentions for the EU to have a separate legal and political identity on the international stage should also be scrapped. Finally, Britain should agree to a revised monetary union for those who a) want it; and b) agree to fiscal harmonisation but insist that ALL EU member-states have a say over the running of such a union.

If not the unelected Euro-fanatics could well win the day in the name of short-term expediency.  That will mean an even more unaccountable, ‘communitarian’ Brussels.  In time, it will also mean more national sovereignty will vanish down a Brussels black hole and thus be lost to incompetence and secrecy. It will certainly mean that any pretence to a link between European power and the European people will vanish leading to a ‘Europe’ run by faceless Eurocrats overseen by toothless and meaningless institutions dangerously far distant from the ordinary citizen.

What gives Britain the right? As one of my Dutch neighbours said to me, “We could not understand when the Euro was created why you British did not want to join. Now we do and you were right, just as you were right about the Constitutional Treaty and European defence”. This crisis is too important for Britain to stand aside. London must lead the EU or leave it.

Now Britain! Now’s your time!

Julian Lindley-French