hms iron duke

hms iron duke

Thursday 13 September 2012

BAE Systems is Selling Britain Down the Euro Drain

Alphen, Netherlands. 13 September.  There is not much these days on the news that makes me sit up and say, “what”?  However, the news that BAE Systems, Britain’s leading defence contractor, is in talks to “merge” with EADS made me sit bolt upright.  The proposed “merger” is nothing of the sort.  It is a straight forward take-over of BAE Systems by the French and Germans who will together own 60% of the new company.  BAE Systems say the imperative is purely business, driven by the massive cuts to the UK defence budget that the British government has foisted on the armed forces.  For the French and Germans the imperative is purely strategic; to make the costs of any future British departure from the EU exorbitantly high and effectively kill at birth any hope of an alternative defence Anglosphere. 
 
A few years ago I would have fully supported such a move.  In November 2010 Britain joined France at the heart of efforts to better integrate the European defence effort.  Falling defence orders and defence cuts were driving up the costs of defence production and with it the cost to the taxpayer of each piece of military kit.  Moreover, with Britain, France and Germany representing 88% of all defence-technological research in Europe merging the efforts of Europe’s prime contractors made for some strategic logic.
 
And then came the Eurozone crisis which has changed all Europe’s strategic and political relationships and shifted Britain from being one of Europe’s big powers to a high-paying, low benefit peripheral irrelevance.  This deal will only make a bad situation worse.  BAE Systems is not any old company. 
 
Therefore, if PR-Meister Cameron has any political and strategic nous at all (and I am really beginning to wonder) he would understand that London needs as much strategic room for manoeuvre as possible.  This is particularly important in the defence realm which for all the damage done by the accountants remains about the only ‘strategic’ card London can play in the re-ordering of European power that is taking place.
 
And yet, the very day European Commission President Manuel Barroso calls for more treaty changes and a federation of European states BAE Systems announces that it is seeking to tie Britain into a political Europe that Britain and the British people want no part of.  The political implications of this move will not have been lost on Paris and Berlin.
 
Furthermore, BAE Systems has spent years making itself a player in the dominant US market.  Not only would such a merger raise profound questions about BAE Systems access to US contracts, be it as a prime contractor or as a partner, the EADS takeover will raise serious doubts in the American mind as to whether Britain can any longer be trusted with sensitive defence-technological information.
 
London is making much about guarantees and ‘golden shares’ but in reality when the takeover is complete Britain will find the defence-industrial tail wagging the defence-strategic dog.  The usual meally-mouthed nonsense has of course been uttered about protecting the national interest.  A spokesman (who are these people?) said, “Given the nature of the companies’ activities we would of course want to ensure that the UK’s public interest was properly protected”.  And yet the Government feels unable to veto this deal as it is purely of a business nature.  It is not! 
 
This is simply another example of an incompetent government that does not understand the strategic implications of its own weakness sacrificing the strategic long-term for the balance-sheet short-term.  Can you imagine a French or German government being as supine?  Absolutely not!
 
By all means deepen defence collaboration BETWEEN BAE Systems and EADS and indeed between Britain, France and Germany, as there is a long and by and large successful history of such joint ventures.  However, to permit Britain’s one true defence prime contractor to be effectively taken over by a company that operates under the edict of two foreign governments who have shown themselves to be less than friendly to Britain of late is utter folly.  Two governments who are spearheading a political venture that is increasingly at odds with Britain’s strategic interest.  When will British governments realise that the job is not to keep foreigners happy, but to stand up for the British people and their strategic interests?
 
London has led Britain into the worse of all Euro-worlds.  The relationship between costs and benefit of EU membership for Britain is already so distorted as to render Brussels an appalling tax on British jobs and society.  Britain gets nothing from the EU; it is about to get even less.
 
BAE Systems is selling Britain down the Euro Drain.  The British Government is letting it happen.  This is a strategic error of the first magnitude - the wrong decision at the wrong time.  Why am I not surprised?
 
Julian Lindley-French

Wednesday 12 September 2012

Zombie Europe

Alphen, Netherlands,12 September.  It is election day here in the Netherlands and my Dutch wife has just gone off to exercise her democratic right.  Having watched the campaign on TV I am struck by how small these Dutch politicians are and how little able to grasp the enormity of the events that are engulfing the Dutch people. Only in last night’s TV debate did the issue of Europe and the Euro really ignite. 
 
The simple fact is that my life and that of millions of other Dutch taxpayers is now decided elsewhere often by unelected officials who care little for my well-being and who want only to ‘transfer’ what little money I have to Europe’s super-debtors so they can avoid the consequences of their own actions.  Dutch politicians are not alone in their increasing irrelevance as ever more unaccountable power is passed to European institutions in a desperate bid to save a currency that simply does not work. 
 
It is not without a certain political elegance that the day the Dutch turn out to vote the European Omission is setting out plans for a banking super-regulator to oversee the Eurozone’s six thousand banks as a first step on the road to full banking union and who knows what thereafter.  It will, of course, all be overseen in my name by Mario Draghi – Super Mario – and his increasingly (dangerously) powerful European Central Bank.
 
In the euphemistic language of the Omission banking union is yet another attempt to ‘mutualise’ the debts of the super-debtors.  Or, to be more exact, ‘banking union’ is an indirect way to load the costs onto me for the appalling decisions of appalling politicians over whom I have no influence.  Whether I or other northern, western European taxpayers pay directly or via the banks one thing is clear; sooner or later my little savings will be raided (again) to pay for this mess, be it via tax or currency inflation…or both.
 
Worse, the Omission’s proposed banking union breaks the link between risk and responsibility by making sound northern European banks, such as my own Rabobank, responsible for the bad lending and sovereign debt decisions of all.  This will only encourage the profligacy that created this mess and render less likely vital structural reforms.  There will be rules, I am told, that will ensure the European Stability Mechanism and the European Financial Stability Fund is properly overseen.  However, in reality Super Mario will be in charge and it is clear that he places the interests of his fellow southern Europeans well before my own.   
 
My last formal hope for effective European democratic oversight was also dashed today.  The German Constitutional Court ruled that a permanent European bail out mechanism was legal under the German constitution.  The decision means the ESM and EFSF can now be enshrined in German law and the German government can go on transferring German taxpayer’s money to the super-debtors and by extension my own, as the Netherlands is little more than a German colony administered from Brussels these days. 
 
As of now my last hope rests with the common sense of the German people.  There is a faint hope that German public unease will see demands grow for a referendum in Germany.  This will not happen anytime soon as the way is now clear for the next massive tranche of my money to vanish down the black hole of the super-debtors.  However, when all of this again goes wrong, as it will, I am confident the German people will say “enough”!  And then finally some German common sense will be applied to the appalling tax on my future that the European Onion has become.
 
The sad truth is that the election campaign here in the Netherlands has for the most part been about anything but Europe, even though it is by far the biggest issue facing the Dutch people.  In their collective desperation to hide their impotence Dutch politicians have focused on the tactical rather than the strategic.  Several of them have actually called for more Dutch ‘power’ to be given to ‘Europe’ further undermining any residual value in Dutch democracy.  
 
The Euro-Aristocracy is now well on its way to cementing its power.  How long before free speech becomes the next victim?  Indeed, unelected Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti has already called for a summit on what he calls "populism".
 
The sad truth is that zombie politicians are leading zombie states into an increasingly zombie Europe.  Europe today is full of empty democracies.  
 
Oh how I weep for my democracy.  Oh how I weep for my Europe.
 
Julian Lindley-French

Monday 10 September 2012

NATO: Raising the Titanic or Lowering the Atlantic?

Alphen, Netherlands. 10 September.  I was back in NATO HQ in Brussels on Friday.  Each time I enter NATO’s sprawling complex I cannot help but think of doomed British film producer Lord Grade.  Having staked his future on one of Hollywood’s great flops, “Raise the Titanic”, he lamented afterwards that it would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic than raise the Titanic.  The eclipsing of the 2010 NATO Strategic Concept by the Eurozone crisis and the pending failure in Afghanistan (for that is what it is) will once again bring sharp focus upon NATO’s now eternal question; what is it for?
 
In fact given Europe’s strategic retreat/pretence the only outstanding issue is the relevance of Europeans to America’s grand strategy.  If none then both NATO and indeed Europe’s future defence will fail.  Last week in Poland I was struck by the self-delusion of many Europeans with regard to this most fundamental of strategic questions.  There was much talk of Europe’s strategic autonomy even as cuts of up to 30% to European defence budgets mean Europe will be more not less reliant on the US for its defence.  Implicit in that reality is another question that Europeans seem almost psychotically determined to avoid; what price an over-stretched America will demand to guarantee the future defence of Europe?
 
The crux of the matter is essentially simple.  If France in particular, aided and abetted inadvertently by the likes of Greece and Turkey, continue to block NATO’s true transformation into a strategic alliance nothing is more certain to guarantee the formation of an Anglosphere beyond the Alliance and with it the demise of the key Franco-British strategic defence partnership.  Indeed, the vain hope by some (it is thankfully only some) in Paris that by stymying NATO somehow an autonomous strategic Europe will be fashioned from the wreckage is profoundly misguided (with genuine respect Paris).
 
The North Atlantic Council has been reduced by this impasse to little more than marking the card of Supreme Allied Commander Admiral Jim Stavridis and his team rather than acting as the font of strategic guidance.  This narrowing of the NAC’s role has not only killed the Strategic Concept but made it impossible for Allied Command Transformation to do its job; transform Alliance militaries.
 
Much will depend on who is appointed the next NATO Secretary-General.  Anders Fogh Rasmussen has brought both strengths and weaknesses to the job.  As a former prime minister he has certainly given the post more influence amongst erstwhile peers but too often he has overplayed his hand and coming from a small country with little influence in the EU his job has been made that much harder.  Possible candidates include Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski, and it is certainly time for a central or eastern European to lead the Alliance.  However, whilst he can be brilliant Sikorski’s ego too often gets in the way of the greater good and he has proven himself no friend of either the US or UK of late.  A Sikorski NATO would be too much about Sikorski and not enough about NATO.
 
Italy’s foreign minister the impressive Franco Frattini is also in the running but making a Rome insider NATO Sec-Gen would hardly instil strategic confidence especially given that the Italians withdrew from operations over Libya because it was costing too much.  In any case Mario Draghi is already at the European Central Bank.  A radical choice would be to appoint someone from the Baltic states who truly understand the meaning of NATO and who is respected on both sides of the Atlantic and in the EU.  Former Latvian defence minister Imants Lietgis would be my choice.  In reality given the strategic challenges faced by the Alliance NATO needs a big political beast from a big European country and that means a Robert Schumann, Manfred Woerner or George Robertson. 
 
Quite simply whoever takes NATO’s helm will need to radically reform an Alliance that is fast becoming a kind of latter day Maginot Line.  Rather, it must become the strategic hub at the heart of a complex web of regional and global partnerships able both to add value to the US and act ‘independently’ (90% of all operations over Libya were US-enabled) when called upon to do so.  NATO sits at the nexus between alliance and coalition in this age or it sits nowhere.  That will mean real defence transformation which for smaller members will mean real defence integration.
 
If NATO is to be finally prepared for its post-Afghanistan, post 911 future it is vital the Alliance as a whole lifts its ‘vision’ from the parochial trench it has dug for itself.  That means a NATO that again raises the Atlantic, the transatlantic, in a century that will be full of icebergs.
 
Julian Lindley-French

 

 

Wednesday 5 September 2012

Why Anglo-Polish Relations Need A Reset

Krynica, Poland. 5 September. They call it the ‘Davos of the East’, the Krynica Economic Forum.  It must be a mark of Europe’s desperate economic straits that I have been invited to speak at this huge economics conference.  Thankfully, the question posed by my old friend Andrew Michta, Director of the German Marshall Fund Warsaw was closer to home; what implications does the US ‘pivot’ toward Asia pose for Europe?
 
I shared my panel with a senior British politician who like so many in the British elite seem to have brought into the whole ‘a Britain on the margins of Europe is a Britain lost’ nonsense. Indeed, after this year’s public demonstrations of polite but firm British patriotism it saddens me deeply that a British people who still believe in Britain are led so woefully by an elite who by and large do not.  Talk about lions led by donkeys!
An under-current during my visit here has been the poor state of Anglo-Polish relations.  In the past 24 hours I have heard the following condemnations of Britain and its doings: Britain betrayed Poland in World War Two; Britain is irrelevant (a belief official London seems only too happy to encourage); Britain is being replaced by Poland as a European power.
First, the idea that Britain betrayed Poland in World War Two is not just wrong but plain offensive.  Britain went to war for Poland’s liberty and then fought on at great cost in the Cold War to support Poland in its struggle for freedom.  Yes, the 1945 Yalta Conference abandoned Poland to the Soviets but by then Britain was exhausted militarily and weak politically.  It was Washington and Moscow that were calling the shots so to blame Britain for Yalta is plain wrong.
Second, Britain is irrelevant.  This chimes with the strategic defeatism of so much of the London elite that I can hardly blame Poles for thinking this.  In a sense it is also linked to the third strain of Polish thinking that Warsaw is replacing Britain as a European power.  At one level there is some substance to this view.  Poland wants to join the Euro “when the time is right”, whereas Britain does not.  All the indicators are that Britain is moving inexorably towards an in-out referendum on EU membership, something the Poles would never contemplate given the financial benefits Poland gains from the Union, which of course Britain does not.
However, great country that Poland is some dose of political realism is needed here before Poland makes an historic mistake.  The prevailing assumption, certainly in the Polish Foreign Ministry, seems to be that Poland will emerge to join the Germans and the French in the Eurozone directorate (otherwise known as European political union).  Poland clearly matters.  For example, Warsaw has been instrumental in forming the so-called Weimar Triangle with Germany and France.  However, there is little real substance to this initiative, more Bermuda triangle than Weimar triangle with much talking about improved military capabilities going in but nothing much coming out.  .
Poland is not (yet) Britain.  It lacks the economic and military muscle of even a straitened Britain.  And, influence in Europe (and beyond) will for the foreseeable future continue to be built on those two pillars whether Britain is in the Euro or not.  Poland will thus never replace Britain.  In fact, strategic logic would suggest that France and Germany will never fully admit Poland to the Europe-critical Franco-German axis, just as Berlin and Paris has never and will never admit Britain, even if London signed up to the Euro tomorrow.  Poland and Britain thus need to work closely together.
What is amazing about this amazing country is that in spite of centuries of powerful neighbours trying to destroy it the Poles are still here slugging.   It seems strange then that having fought so hard for its national sovereignty modern Poland seems so keen to sacrifice it in the vague name of ‘Europe’ that could in time further damage the transatlantic relationship   Surely all the lessons of Polish history should be that Poland’s freedom can only be guaranteed by a proper balance between the great powers of Europe.  
As an historian I am deeply conscious of Poland’s suffering.  If any country ‘won’ the Cold War it was Poland.  However, modern Poland needs to put aside its prejudice about Britain and help reset an Anglo-Polish relationship that is as important to Europe’s political stability as ever.  But that begs a further question; why can Poland lay aside its historic prejudice about Germany so easily (which is good to see) and not Britain?  After all it was not we Brits who invaded Poland sixty-three years ago this week!
London and Warsaw need to put this right.
Julian Lindley-French

Friday 31 August 2012

Afghanistan: An Allotment in a Jungle

Alphen, Netherlands. 31 August, 2012.  Nothing makes my blood boil more than recently retired senior government officials suddenly changing their story once retired.  Earlier this year I was excoriated for suggesting that our troops were dying in Afghanistan for want of a meaningful political strategy and to avoid the political embarrassment of leaders.  Yesterday, Ambassador Sherard Cowper-Coles, London’s former ‘man in Kabul’, went on BBC radio to launch a stinging attack on both the American and British governments.  He said that the undoubted achievements of American, British and other coalition armed forces in denying Afghanistan to Al Qaeda had been wasted due to a lack of a meaningful political strategy built on reconciliation within Afghanistan and a regional political settlement beyond.  Cowper-Coles likened the West’s strategy to “cultivating an allotment (small vegetable garden) in a jungle” and virtually quoted me (unintentionally) when he said that the military surge had failed because it had not been matched by a political surge.
 
This dreadful week in which five Australian soldiers were killed, three of whom died in yet another so-called green-on-blue attack and in which eleven civilians were beheaded by the Taliban in Helmand province, has again highlighted not so much a failing political strategy as the absence of one.  Five years ago I wrote two major reports on Afghanistan following a visit to that beautiful, but broken country and in 2009 I wrote the original “Plan B for Afghanistan” for the International Institute for Strategic Studies (still online).  Plan B highlighted exactly the points that are now being presented as revealed truth by the the so-called great and good as the scramble begins to shift and avoid blame for failure. 
 
Former US Special Envoy the late Richard Holbrooke said that the West was fighting the wrong enemy with the wrong strategy in the wrong country.  Only a proper regional strategy with the stabilization of Pakistan at its centre would have afforded Afghans the semblance of a ‘peace’ beyond the heroin-funded, fundamentalist-driven, tribal-brokered anarchy that is likely to be their future.  Sadly, it is too late now.
 
It is the old quantity versus quality problem.  However large the Afghan National Army or the Afghan police unless and until there is a government in Kabul worthy of the name Western forces are simply preparing Afghanistan for the inevitable civil war that will follow 2014.
 
Sadly, the dishonesty is likely to continue.  Much is made by Washington and London of their continued commitment to Afghanistan post-2014 (other allies are already on their way out).  It is a sham.  I was approached to become a member of a consortium bidding for a contract to provide defence education.  Only after some time did I realise that in fact I was being suckered into a contract to go to Afghanistan post-2014 as a defence-educator simply to maintain the pretence that American and British politicians are keeping their word.  Once the bulk of Western forces withdraw anyone who goes will be little more than hostage-bait.
 
It is patently obvious that both American and British politicians are now more intent in putting distance between themselves and Afghanistan than supporting the troops with real political capital. Indeed, it is striking how the West’s Afghan veterans are fast becoming like those Russians who went home broken in the wake of Moscow's 1989 withdrawal.  Known as The Forgotten Division they have to fight for the most basic of support simply because by existing they remind Russia’s leaders of failure.  Thankfully our veterans are treated far better but for far too long the West’s young men and women in uniform, together with their partners from across the globe, have carried our politicians creating an alibi for appalling leadership. 
 
It is not Ambassador Cowper-Coles who is in my sights as he did indeed try to change things from within.  However, too often those taking the President’s buck or the Queen’s shilling do far too little to shift policy and strategy from within government and are all too quick to attack it having left, especially when there is a book to sell.  It is the mark of the cynicism of both London and Washington these days that careers matter more than honour.
 
It is this behaviour that prevents government from confronting truth and helps politicians avoid uncomfortable truths.  It is compounded by attempts to silence critics who are simply confirming the blindingly obvious; that in the absence of a real and sustained political strategy our young men and women are dying in Afghanistan for nothing and will continue to do so until they are withdrawn in 2014. 
 
Afghanistan is indeed an allotment in a jungle.  Which jungle is a good question - there or here. This blog is dedicated to the five brave Australians killed this week. 
 
Julian Lindley-French

Wednesday 29 August 2012

The Main Event

Alphen, Netherlands. 29 August.  Many people have inspired me.  Winston Churchill for refusing to compromise with evil, Ed Murrow for taking on corrupt power to protect free speech, Martin Luther King for reminding Americans that all people are born equal and Nelson Mandela for creating a nation out of forgiveness.  But there is one who this week will be rightly celebrated because he not only gave many young men their broken lives back but overcame prejudice and discrimination – Sir Dr Ludwig “Poppa” Guttmann, the founding father of the Paralympics which start today in London.
He was an unlikely British hero.  A German Jew who had been Germany’s top brain surgeon before the Nazis banned him from practising in 1933.  He had been born in what was then eastern Germany when the Kaiser was on the throne and fled with his family to Britain in 1939 to escape Nazi persecution.  What he found in Britain appalled him and he refused to accept the latent prejudice in the British medical establishment of the time that condemned many young British servicemen crippled by war to a life of unjust marginalisation or simply to die of infected bedsores or urinary infections.  Their life expectancy was six months, condemned to die by prejudice as much as injury.  When they arrived from the battlefield his patients were even shipped in coffin-like boxes in seeming anticipation of their pending demise.
Like all such pioneers he was not an easy man, as hard on his patients as the stifling officialdom that simply wanted to wish away his ‘paraplegics’.  He fought for their dignity but also demanded equal commitment from them.  At Stoke Mandeville hospital he slowly created a world-leading centre for the treatment of severe spinal injury suffered in battle.  He was possessed of that special quality that refused to accommodate the ‘old boy network’ that even today blights Britain. He did not come from the right school and he did not speak with the right accent and he had little time for those who spoke the language of integrity and dignity only to shuffle their feet when called upon to act in its name. Something I have seen all too clearly for myself of late.
His genius was to understand that quality of life was as much a battle for the spirit as the body.  And it was that insight that led him to create the Stoke Mandeville Games, which took place on 28 July, 1948 the same day as the 1948 London Olympics opened.  Indeed, he called his event the “Parallel Olympics”.  From modest beginnings the Games have grown into the Paralympics of today in which 4200 athletes from 65 countries will compete in intense completion for much-prized medals.  In so doing Guttmann reminded the world that there is no distinction at all between the able-bodied and the disabled.
His old unit was set up in the wake of the June 1944 allied invasion of France as spinal injuries soared. It survives to this day in the guise of the National Spinal Injuries Centre (surely it should be the Royal National Spinal Injuries Centre) and supports some 5000 patients.
Between 1948 and 1960 the Stoke Mandeville Games grew year on year as ever more war veterans and disabled people from across the world came together to compete.   In 1960, a week after the flame had died on the seventeenth Olympiad the first official Parallel Olympics was held in Rome. It was not just the Games that Guttmann’s genius helped to inspire but the whole treatment of people with disabilities from housing to travel, from work to leisure.What he did was to change the mind-set of official and unofficial Britain alike and in time much of the world beyond.
Guttmann became a naturalised British citizen in 1945 and in 1966 was knighted by Her Majesty the Queen for his services to Britain and disabled people.  He died in 1980.  However, his spirit lives on and there is no doubt he will be looking down from on high at the 2012 Paralympics with much pride. The 2012 London Olympics were simply the warm up.  If you want to see courage and utter determination to overcome adversity watch the main event.  It is called the London Paralympics and it starts today.
Thank you, Sir Ludwig.  You reminded us all that it is what people can do that matters, not what others think they cannot.  It is a lesson that needs to be constantly taught and re-taught, especially to those empty souls who claim to uphold fairness and freedom from discrimination but all too often do not.
Julian Lindley-French

Monday 27 August 2012

The Syria Bluff

Alphen, Netherlands. 27 August.  It is clearly intelligence-led.  President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron have said that any recourse to chemical weapons by Damascus would be “completely unacceptable” and would lead the US and UK to “revisit their approach” to the crisis.  According to Obama even moving the weapons would cross an American “red line” with “enormous consequences”.  The implication is clear; the US and UK are considering military action.  Is it a credible threat?
 
The threat posed by Syrian chemical weapons is certainly credible.  Damascus is believed to possess some one thousand tons of mustard gas, together with the nerve agent Sarin and possibly VX gas.  It is held in over fifty locations but focused on five main sites relatively close to the Turkish, Lebanese and Israeli borders.  Syria is also capable of producing several hundred tons of mustard gas per year.
 
The political implications of Anglo-American military action would be profound.  The days are now long gone when the West could seemingly act with impunity in the name of humanitarian interventionism.  That is why Cameron in separate talks with French President Hollande agreed to, “work more closely to identify how they could bolster the opposition and help a potential transitional government after the inevitable fall of Assad”. 
 
Moreover, a Western-led strike against Syria’s main chemical weapons sites would almost certainly take place without the support of the UN Security Council and thus further sour relations with China and Russia.  Arab support would be critical, particularly and at the very least that of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, because it is highly unlikely that Arab League support could be secured as an alternative source of political legitimacy.  Iran would inevitably see such an attack as part of a much bigger stratagem aimed at Tehran and there is even the possibility that members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard would be killed or injured. 
 
In Europe the prospect of British and French forces acting alongside the US, much in the way they did over Libya, would no doubt split Europeans (again).  Even at home it is hard to see the American, British or French people happy to see their forces inserted yet again into another political quagmire. 
 
Military action would be complicated to say the least. That is why Obama has suggested that even moving the weapons would cross an American “red line”.  If they are dispersed prior to use then the already limited chances of such a strike succeeding would be reduced to nil.  The strike would need to be overwhelmingly US-led using Special Forces acting on real, real-time intelligence probably operating from bases in Israel and Turkey, which would itself complicate matters.  Jimmy Carter’s botched April 1980 attempt to rescue American diplomats held in Tehran would no doubt gravely exercise Obama’s military and political planners in this election year. 
 
The French might be able to offer some air support, most likely from their aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle.  The British could perhaps offer their Special Forces, which remain amongst the few units in the British armed forces that have not been significantly weakened by London’s savage defence cuts, the impact of which was all too apparent in the skies above Libya.  Indeed, it is becoming increasingly galling to hear Cameron talk big on the world stage as he cuts the very forces with which he needs to act.  ‘Talk big, act small' is rapidly becoming the mantra of this increasingly incompetent British government (and that is saying something).  The rest of Europe?  Forget it.
 
However, the greatest danger is that once again the West will confuse values with interests and use the threat posed by Syria’s chemical weapons to embroil its forces in a Syrian civil war in pursuit of vague humanitarian objectives.  The Syrian opposition is made up of a range of groups and beliefs some of which are implacably anti-Western.  Failure would end at a stroke the new, implicit ‘strike and punish’ strategies of all Western powers and simply lead to another failed intervention at the end of this age of failed interventions.
 
Ultimately, any such mission could offer no guarantee that Syria’s chemical arsenal can be either destroyed or neutralized.   Better instead to carefully identify those members of the opposition with whom the West can work.  And, uncomfortable though it may be establish contact with those with links to the regime who might be able to help form a transitional government in Syria.
 
Richard Schickel once wrote, “The law of unintended consequences pushes us ceaselessly through the years, permitting no pause for perspective”. 
 
It is time for perspective on Syria.  This is no time to bluff.
Julian Lindley-French