SOS: Save Our Sailors

Alphen, Netherlands. 20 May.  As I write somewhere, out in mid-Atlantic four Britons could be tenaciously clinging onto the last lease of life firm in their belief that someone is searching for them. They are probably wrong and have been left to die.  

The thought of Andrew Bridge, Paul Goslin, James Male and Steve Warren struggling for life as they slowly die of dehydration and hyperthermia whilst governments on both sides of the Atlantic 'have consultations' but publicly say and do nothing is not only appalling it is utterly inexcusable. 

The petition for a resumed search now runs to over 100,000 signatures.  Jeremy Hunt, the Secretary of State for Health has joined the call.  Legendary solo round-the-world sailor Sir Robin Knox-Johnson says they could still be alive and has joined the call. And yet the silence of the American and British Governments is deafening.   

Yes, a search would be difficult because the four men's yacht Cheeki Rafiki appears to have lost its keel some 1000 nautical miles off Cape Cod.  And yes there is a chance the men have already perished. However, the search falls in the area of responsibility of the United States Coastguard part of the world's most advanced military.  

Moreover, all the evidence suggests these four experienced sailors managed to get into their state of the art life-raft and engaged not one but two rescue beacons.  The US Coastguard says that it uses a sophisticated model that considers age, experience, time and conditions to decide survivability.  Sod the model!   There are several tales from World War Two of torpedoed sailors with far less survival equipment surviving for longer in even more inclement weather.   

What is particularly galling is that both the American and British Governments put an immense effort into trying to find the lost Malaysian airliner MH370 when all hope was lost.  London sent a nuclear submarine and HMS Echo to help with the search even though no British citizens were involved.

Calling off the search after three days in mid-May smacks not of impossibility but bureaucratic and political indifference to the fate of four British citizens. It is tragically ironic how willing British governments are to get involved in MH270 type incidents when foreigners are involved.  It is after all good for strategic communications.  However, London seems indifferent to the fate of four Britons.  And I really wonder if the US would have called off the search so early if the sailors had been American.

I hope I am wrong and things really are being done behind the scenes to try and find these four men. And I have been assured at the highest levels that such efforts are being made to save the men. However, over the past 24 critical hours I see absolutely no evidence of that.

If it transpires that the search was abandoned simply because the fate of the crew of Cheeki Rafiki fell either in the 'not our problem' or the 'too difficult to try' box then someone, somewhere should and hopefully will pay a price.  I doubt it.

To call off the search so early is utterly unacceptable.  The search for the four men must be resumed forthwith!

SOS: Save Our Sailors!

Julian Lindley-French  

NATO: Standing Up for Freedom and Security

Alphen, Netherlands. 19 May.  “The aim is clear”, said NATO Secretary-General Rasmussen in a speech I attended Friday in Bratislava. “Russia is trying to establish a new sphere of influence.  In defiance of international law and fundamental agreements that Russia itself has signed. This has profound, long-term implications for our security. And it requires serious, long-term solutions”.  Are the NATO Allies up to the radical changes in strategy, posture, capabilities and mind-set implicit in Rasmussen’s call?

Calling a spade a spade is Yorkshire for simply stating fact. Joseph Devlin, in his 1910 book “How to Speak and Write Correctly” poked fun at the politically pompous and their use of circuitous language writing “…you may not want to call a spade a spade.  You may prefer to call it a spatulous device for abraiding the surface of the soil.  Better, however, to stick to the old, familiar simple name that your grandfather called it”.  On Friday Rasmussen did something very rare for a leader these days; he called a “spade a spade”.  There were no eloquent but empty ‘ifs’, no dissembling, emergency exit ‘buts’; just a plain statement of fact that Europeans and North Americans together must grip if the world is again to be made secure for freedom and democracy. 

Unfortunately, the West is looking at the Ukraine crisis from the wrong end of the strategic telescope.  Russia’s action is not simply a one-off function of an opportunist, expansionist, acquisitive regime, although it is clearly all of the above.  It is also a symptom of the long and dangerous retreat from strategic first principles by the European democracies.  Sadly, this retreat into a wannabe world is not simply confined to Europe’s smaller powers.  It is the central theme in my latest book Little Britain: Twenty-First Century Strategy for a Middling European Power (2014: www.amazon.com).  

Re-establishing the place of credible and affordable military power at the heart of legitimate and stabilising influence is the nub of the challenge the Secretary-General has rightly identified.  However, the realisation of such “solutions” will not be easy and require the kind of strategic vision and political courage noticeably absent amongst Europe’s current political elite. 

Shortly after Rasmussen spoke I had the honour to share a panel with my good friend US Marine Corps General (Retd.) John Allen.  General Allen is a very balanced man; a fighting, thinking, humane soldier.  He warned of the growing global gap in military power between the mature democracies and the emerging acquisitive oligarchies such as China and Russia.  It is a warning worth heeding.  Beijing and Moscow have replaced democratic legitimacy with what might best be termed growth legitimacy by which the elite hold power in return for improved living standards.  Void of democratic checks and balances such regimes are inherently hyper-competitive with military power the central pillar of state influence.    

Against the backdrop of this shifting grand strategic scheme of things there are five solutions the NATO Allies must urgently and collectively consider at the September 2014 Wales Summit: re-engaged strategy, a new type of defence, a new type of military, new partnerships, and above all a new strategic and political mind-set.  Each and all of these changes are vital if NATO and its members are once again to credibly engage dangerous change.  Time is running out.

NATO’s 2010 Strategic Concept provides more than enough strategic guidance but lacks sufficient political investment.  Implicit in the Concept is the need for the Alliance to generate influence across the mission spectrum.  That means a NATO able to offer continuing support to a fragile Afghanistan beyond the ISAF mission and at the same time act as a credible conventional deterrent and if needs be war-fighter to prevent the kind of adventurism in which Russia is currently engaged.

NATO’s Article 5 collective defence architecture remains the bedrock of Alliance credibility.  However, collective defence is in urgent need of modernisation based on three elements: missile defence, cyber-defence and deeply-joint, networked advanced expeditionary forces. 

However, it is the twenty-first century balance between protection and projection which is the key to NATO’s continued strategic utility.  It is vital that NATO pioneers a new type of deep, joint force able to operate across air, sea, land, cyber, space and knowledge.  It is a force that must also be able to play its full part in cross-government civilian and military efforts building on the lessons from the ISAF campaign.  To realise such a vision NATO’s command structures need to be further reformed, with transformation and experimentation brought to the fore.

Freedom and security in this age means the rejection of spheres of influence and a commitment to the right of sovereign states to make sovereign choices.  First, NATO must move quickly to formalise the strategic partnerships it has fostered in recent operations with democracies the world-over to reinforce the emerging world-wide web of democracies.  Second, NATO must offer a Membership Action Plan to Georgia at the Wales Summit.

Above all, NATO’s European allies need to undergo a profound mind-set change if they and the Alliance are to deal with the harsh realities of the hyper-competitive twenty-first century and the harsh strategic judgements it will impose.  NATO European Allies must finally reinvest the agreed 2% per annum of their national wealth (GDP) in their armed forces and drive forward with military reforms, as well as pooling, sharing and some defence integration.   

For too long European leaders have refused to call a spade a spade and instead retreated into weakness-masking metaphors and strategic spin.  If NATO is to be rendered fit for twenty-first century grand purpose a level of strategic unity of effort and purpose will be needed that has been utterly lacking of late.  Only then will the Alliance’s political mechanisms in such urgent need of reform and streamlining render the Alliance a credible actor in crises. 

Thank you, Mr Secretary-General for calling a spade a spade.  It was about time. NATO is a political alliance and standing up for freedom and security its core mission.  That means action and now. Do we collectively have the ambition and are we up to the challenge?  Can we really call a strategic spade a spade?

Julian Lindley-French

GLOBSEC: Mario Monti’s Malaise

Bratislava, Slovakia. 16 May.  Oops! I am in the doghouse again. I have just been told off by EU uber-elitiste and Senator-for-Life Mario Monti here at GLOBSEC for raising an ever-so-tedious question about democracy, legitimacy and accountability in the EU.  How very uneducated of me.  GLOBSEC is truly one of the great conferences but the last panel on the “EU After the 2014 Vote” demonstrated not only all that is wrong with the EU elite, but also the danger to democracy posed by the elite-assumed over-concentration of power in the hands of an unelected few.

In response to my impertinent question (how dare citizens question the powerful) Mr Monti (Senator-for-Life) told me that whilst democracy and accountability were important they were not the only way to get things done.  At one point he embarked on a wholesale attack on the very principle of referenda by using a historical case to demonstrate why the people are invariably wrong and that elites should be left to run matters.  The last decade of elite-created disaster suggest otherwise.

The language of the session was typical of the cosy elitist love-in Brussels insiders enjoy at such events.  Euro-realists (such as I) and Euro-sceptics are suspect for fear we might offend elitist sensibilities.  All and any opposition to the ‘European Project’ is dismissed as ‘populism’.  All and any of us expressing concerns about the growing distance between power and the people are condemned as populists. 

To protect them from any ‘unpleasantness’ the elite invariably surround themselves with their intellectual flunkies and other fellow travellers drawn from the Brussels think-tanks.  And, as ever, my country Britain is routinely insulted as the ‘devil island’ because we British even dare to raise fundamental questions of political principle.  “Shut up and pay us your money” seems to be the essential message from Mr Monti (Senator-for-Life).

Best (or worst) of all Mr Monti (Senator-for-Life) questioned whether national democracy was any more legitimate than EU ‘democracy’.  After all, he said there were British ministers in the House of Lords.  He forgot to mention that there is one big difference between British democracy and EU ‘democracy’.  In Britain I know who my MP is and if I have an issue I can go and see my representative.  On one such occasion the MP in question happened to be a minister and helped to resolve quickly an obvious injustice.  Sadly, for too many in the EU elite ‘the people’ exist only in the abstract and ‘democracy’ only matters when the people agree with them.  If indeed further integration is to take place and more power is handed to Brussels such concerns cannot simply be brushed aside by the kind of elite dissembling as I witnessed today.

The next European Parliament could have a lot of people elite who do not buy into Project Europe.  Some of whom will be nasty extremists but by no means all.  Nor will they be as one of Mr Monti’s colleagues on the panel called them a ‘distraction’.  Indeed, such arrogant nonsense just demonstrates how detached the EU elite have become from real democracy.  Rather, they will be what we in Britain call the loyal opposition and their ‘dissent’ will make the EU more not less democratic because they have been elected by the people.  Annoying that, eh?

Perhaps the strangest aspect of this emperor-has-no-clothes debate was the discussion over the so-called spitzencanditaten. These are three EU uber-elitists, uber-insiders Junker, Schulz and Verhofstadt one of whom the European Parliament will likely put forward as the next President of the European Commission.  Now, I know we British are meant to shut up and just pay but for what it is worth not one of these three will have any legitimacy or credibility whatsoever with the people of Sheffield.  They will be seen for what they are; foreign politicians with too much power over their lives and so far distant from them that a Brexit will become almost inevitable.

The bottom-line is this; as power moves ever further from the people if the issues of democracy, legitimacy and accountability are not addressed properly by the elite the EU will fail. 

So, as the EU elite move to deepen political integration (as they will) legitimate criticism must not be dismissed as Mr Monti dismissed me. My concerns are neither populism nor some British disease.  Instead the elite must accept the judgement of the people and for once climb down from Mount EUlympus and engage with real issues that concern real people about real democracy.

For the record my aim is not to scrap the EU but to create a Union that I can genuinely feel is representative of and sensitive to my concerns and those of fellow EU citizens.  Today’s EU aint!  Sorry, Mr Monti you are wrong and dangerously so.

Julian Lindley-French

GLOBSEC: The Road to Bratislava

GLOBSEC, Bratislava.  14 May.  In his famous book Danube Claudio Magris wrote, “History shows that it is not only senseless and cruel, but it is also difficult to state who is a foreigner”.  As the GLOBSEC security policy conference bustling and bristling around me the high-rollers are rolling up in their Rollers (well - and inevitably - BMWs these days).  Outside the Danube makes its majestic and serene way.  The river runs through Europe defining both the place and the idea as much as the Rhine albeit with a sense of the East, a corridor as ever between peace and struggle  Indeed, in this new and dangerous age of Machopolitik nowhere in contemporary Europe’s history has a place more defined peace and freedom than Bratislava.  Once on the wrong side of a fearsome border between liberty and oppression the Cold War was about ten thousand Bratislavas.  Today Bratislava is a city of peace on a river of hope.  Will it stay that way or will history again judge Europe with harsh cruelty?

Last night I made a remarkable, unremarkable thirty minute journey from Vienna Airport to Bratislava.  As is befitting my lowly station in life I made the trip not in the back of a luxurious limo but in the back of a minibus trying (as ever) to explain why we British are not ‘mad’ to French and German colleagues.

 

When I was a kid back in the strategic ice-age of the Cold War when politics and life seemed ever so sepia-tinted that thirty minute journey would have crossed from one world to another and would probably not have happened at all. Indeed, the Bratislava border crossing was so notorious it was a scene in John Le Carré’s spy masterpiece Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.  Back then the Danube was a tangled metal ribbon of mine-laden fear and mistrust; a place where trigger-fingers trip-wired the world for destruction.  It was East glaring at West and the West glaring back.

As Russia seemingly endeavours again to define its ‘greatness’ through the fear and intimidation it can impose on other Europeans perhaps the journey I made last night was more pilgrimage than passage in the hope history really can be changed through partnership and inspired leadership.  Today, Bratislava is a charming capital of a small central European country that has found its own place but it is only because big leaders held to big values in the face of big pressure.  Peace was built it did not simply happen.

This is not just a lesson for Machopolitik Moscow.  Living as I do just down the road from Brussels the smell of cynical self-interest dressed up as ‘Europe’ wafts daily over me.  To discover ‘Europe’ today one has to come here and then move east.  Western Europe has become such a ‘whatever’ place; tired of itself, tired of its leaders and their endless pointless drivel and tired of the false hope and false ideas so many of them peddle. 

‘Europe’ today has become so IKEA.  Instead of confronting change and crisis little people struggle instead with little flat packs of little problems hoping against hope that heat rather than light will lead Europe forward. They spend their time on trying to put together little things that do not fit very well with screws loose and nuts missing. 

Sadly, the ability and the will of political leaders to see the real issues and act on them are rare.  They simply lack the requisite vision and courage to confront crises and instead lose themselves in a welter of self-justifying spin so dense that the distinction between truth and falsehood is lost in a thousand sound-bites. 

Today, the road to Bratislava is no longer blocked by checkpoints of chastising ideological chill but it is still pitted with the potholes of short-term, self-interested pretence.  The current crisis in which a European country is again being dismembered by pitiless power has demonstrated that there can be no IKEA fix.  This is a big moment demanding big leadership.

Therefore, if Europe is to win its new battle with Machopolitik Europeans must again remember the road to Bratislava.  Europeans must instead return to the first principles of freedom that in the end made that journey possible driven the will to defend them.  

History is only senseless and cruel if the politics and strategy that make history are driven by short-term prescriptions in which the easy politics of the moment trumps strategy and security.  In standing up to Greater Russia it is time for all Europeans as Europe to stand tall and resist the precedents of macho power Moscow is seeking to re-establish in Europe.  Fail and it will not simply be the poor people of Ukraine who suffer the consequences.  The very idea of ‘Europe’ will have been demonstrated a hollow, empty lie – a good-time gamble unable and unwilling to stand up for the very values and interests it claims as its heritage.

Then indeed history will be cruel in its judgement everybody will again be a foreigner.

Julian Lindley-French

Machopolitik: Why America Still Needs a Strategic Britain

Alphen, Netherlands. 12 May.  Seventy years ago to the day on 6 June 61,715 British troops landed on the Normandy beaches alongside 57,500 Americans and some 21,500 Canadians. The liberation of Western Europe from Nazism had begun.  On 9 May, as President Putin enjoyed his ‘Triumph’ in annexed Crimea and on what the Russians call Victory Day the 1990 commissioned Ukrainian-built aircraft carrier Kuznetsov together with six escorts sailed provocatively through the English Channel and into the North Sea on her way back from a port visit to Syria.  Whilst this is not the first time the Russians have sailed through the Channel the Russian mission and the timing against the backdrop of the current crisis was clearly designed to send a message about Russia’s new Machopolitik and Moscow’s determination to project twenty-first century military power and influence.  And yet far from trying to rebuild the strategic military relationship with Britain after years of British sacrifice in support of US policy the Obama administration is doing all it can to end the strategic partnership with Britain.  In the new age of Machopolitik it could prove to be a profound strategic mistake.  Why?

The tragedy of Obama’s foreign policy is the extent to which it has been captured by EU sympathisers who see Germany as the only state that matters in Europe.  Quite a few of the people around the White House and in the State Department (who I have known for many years) have long been firm advocates of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP).  This is driven by the misplaced belief that an EU policy would not only lead to the creation of a European strategic culture but also solve the age-old Kissinger riddle; which European to call during a crisis. For these people Britain is just so passé a view the EU is quietly trying to foster in Washington.  What they fail to understand is that for the EU to be an effective security actor at the grand strategic level there would need to be a European Government.  Anything less than a European Government simply renders the EU less than the sum of its national parts.

The Obama administration has always reflected an American ambivalence about Britain.  Indeed, it is an ambivalence that was exploited by EU Commission President Barroso in a recent speech in Washington on receiving an award from the Atlantic Council.  In a deliberate snub to Britain Barroso implied that the only transatlantic relationship that mattered was that between the EU and the US and it was notable that Chancellor Merkel joined the gala dinner by video-link to congratulate Barroso.   The Atlantic Council is always sensitive to the prevailing power in Washington and the implicit message was all too clear; the ‘Special Relationship’ with Britain is dead.

Sadly, what the Administration fails to realise is that by ‘strengthening’ the EU at Britain’s expense Washington is also killing NATO.  Moreover, by adopting such a position the Administration is abandoning sound strategy for political and ideological posturing.  This misplaced emphasis on German leadership in Europe simply fails to understand the nature of modern Germany and its strategic orientation. Do not get me wrong, Germany has made an amazing non-military contribution to post-Cold War European stability but Berlin will never be a reliable American partner.  Indeed, the current crisis has revealed all too clearly the deep ambivalence in the German elite about Berlin’s relationships with both Moscow and Washington.  And, whilst Berlin is at least talking about Germany once again becoming a ‘normal power’ replete with capable military forces the Germans are a very long way from being America’s indispensable strategic partner.  

Equally, London must also take responsibility for Britain’s loss of influence in Washington.  At a recent event in Washington the British Ambassador had to remind his American audience that Britain for the moment at least is still actually an independent country.  And yes some of the overly rapid and at times ill-thought through defence cuts in the 2010 British Strategic Defence and Security Review were rightly condemned by the US.  A mistake that could be compounded by the 2015 ‘Silent’ Defence and Security Review as London again confuses politics with strategy by killing public debate on Britain’s big strategic defence choices.  Sadly, one of the reasons for London killing public debate is that the now age-old argument that Britain needs strong armed forces to be a trusted ally of the United States is being systematically undermined by the very people who need a strategic Britain – the Americans.

Equally, the presence of the Kuznetsov also reveals some other strategic realities to which the ideologues of the Obama administration need to awaken.  First, Britain will be Europe’s strongest economy alongside Germany and one of the world’s top ten for years to come.  Indeed, with the euro-free British economy now growing at over 3% per annum London is next month going to wipe out all the losses suffered as a result of the American-inspired 2008 sub-prime loans banking crisis.  Second, Britain will also strengthen its position as Europe’s strongest military power over the next decade and remain one of the world’s top five.

Furthermore, for all its failings SDSR 2010 also got some things spot on in the search for a balance between military capability and affordability even if the tortuous way Britain got there can only be described as well, er, British.  Implicit in the new Royal Navy is a switch from the twentieth century land-centric forces deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan to a new type of twenty-first century deeply joint core force able to operate successfully at the high end of missions across six global domains – air, sea, land, cyber, space and knowledge.  And, if successful Britain's novel new concept for reserves could see the British create a high-end professional force embedded in British society able to reach across and beyond government to civilian partners.

9 May also demonstrated Britain's re-emerging strategic capability.  Sailing alongside the ageing Russian aircraft-carrier was the 2012 commissioned HMS Dragon one of a series of new Type 45 destroyers with capabilities that impress even the United States Navy.  Indeed, with the first of two fleet aircraft carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth about to be launched in the summer and new Astute-class nuclear attack submarines now joining the fleet by 2025 the British will be America’s strongest military ally anywhere combining unrivalled experience with real capability and knowledge.

Contrast that with continental Europe.  The current geopolitical crisis with Russia is once again revealing the deepest of splits within Europe together with a profound lack of political realism across much of Europe. The enduring lack of any meaningful shared strategic culture has helped to devastate defence spending across the EU.  This is profoundly damaging the ability of Europeans to shape their own region let alone anywhere beyond it.  Worse, the implication that President Obama believes he can build a new soft power West with the EU and Germany by downplaying the importance of Britain is reinforcing Europe's retreat from sound defence.  With the US defence budget falling from its current $640bn to $450bn by 2020 and with US forces likely to be stretched thin the world over the Americans will need strong military allies more not less. 

So Mr President, in this new age of Machopolitik get over your anachronistic dislike of a past Britain.  A strategic Britain remains a vital US interest because only such a power with real capability will be able to help lead Europeans and others to operate effectively in the field alongside hard-pressed US forces.  Just like on D-Day.

America still needs a strategic Britain.

Julian Lindley-French

Nigellus Tiberius Farageus?

Alphen, Netherlands. 8 May.  Last night Nigel Farage and UKIP held their last and purposely multicultural pre-election rally in London.  The British Electoral Survey also confirmed yesterday that 60% of those who intend to vote for UKIP in the elections to European Parliament on 22 May will also vote for the Party in the May 2015 British general election one year hence.  UKIP is clearly a political force to stay in British and indeed European politics.  Farage is essentially engaged in a battle over power and legitimacy in twenty-first century Europe.  It is not the first time this has happened in European history.

Recently I have been re-reading a history of the Roman republic (as I am wont to) and I am struck by the striking similarity between Farage and one of the great, tragic figures of Roman history Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus.  Tiberius took on the Roman patrician establishment between 138 and 133 BC to fight for the right of landless peasants, particularly the veteran legionnaires who were the backbone of Rome’s famed armies.

The struggle of Tiberius was essentially between the rights of the ‘plebeian’ citizenry and what patrician aristocracy regarded as their natural ‘right’ to lead and indeed to benefit from Rome’s then expanding empire.  Like today both groups campaigned publicly under the banner of ‘freedom’ and again like today’s EU elite Roman patricians demanded the ‘freedom’ to govern in the name of the republic and by extension the people.  Indeed, for the patricians that was the implicit meaning of SPQR – Senatus Populus que Romanus. 

Like Farage Tiberius was no man of the people.  Indeed, Tiberius was just about as blue-blooded a Roman aristocrat as one could find.  His mother Cornelia was the daughter of Scipio Africanus who had defeated Hannibal and Carthage in the Second Punic War at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC.  Tiberius was also the cousin of Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus who destroyed Carthage in the Third Punic War which finally confirmed Roman power in the Mediterranean.   

Tiberius was particularly concerned about the growing distance between patrician power and the people and the abuses of power such distance was generating.  This is not unlike Farage’s concerns about the growing distance between the citizen and power in the EU as law-making authority is now routinely transferred to Brussels without popular assent or consent.  Nor, judging from the huge amount of very deliberate dirt (and worse) being flung at Farage and UKIP by establishment politicians and their friends in the establishment Press is today’s response much different from that of Rome’s patricians.  It is a mark of people’s concerns in Britain that Farage’s popularity increases with each smear. Today’s patricians have clearly lost the confidence of huge swathes of the people and rightly so.

It was the issue of broken trust that Tiberius championed and which Farage is successfully exploiting.  The EU is simply not seen as being politically legitimate by huge numbers of British people.  Worse, they feel their ability to influence power is being systematically threatened by the EU.  What is the point in voting for national politicians with no power?  That is little different to how Roman citizens and veteran legionnaires felt about Roman patricians in the second century BC.

Therefore, if the political Establishment, be it in Britain or elsewhere across the EU is going to stave off the growing popular revolt Farage is leading they must for once honour their word. They must openly and publicly stop the ever onward and insidious march of the illegitimate European federalists and return control of the EU’s destiny to the member-states and the people where it belongs.  That means doing not merely talking.

The stakes then and now were and are enormous. Like Farage today the struggle Tiberius engaged in over power and legitimacy was enormous.  By the second century BC the patrician class had successfully eroded the rights of the Roman citizen in much the same way the EU has successfully diluted the ability of the average European citizen to exert influence over Brussels. 

The tragedy for Tiberius was that his struggle far from saving the Republic paved the way for its destruction.  His eventual defeat confirmed the patricians in power and over the following century led to the dictatorships (Roman legal term) of Sulla, Pompey the Great and eventually Julius Caesar and Augustus.  All of whom claimed falsely to be acting in the name of the Republic and betrayed it.  The claims of the current EU patrician elite (and Brussels insiders really are a patrician elite) has a strikingly familiar ring at times when they claim to act on behalf of democracy, Europe and the people.  Indeed, I used to be a great fan of the EU until I worked for it and saw too many of today's self-serving patricians (not all) at close quarters.

And hopefully Nigel Farage will not suffer the same grizzly fate as Tiberius.  In 133 BC he was clubbed to death in the lee of the Capitoline Hill by a mob set on him by his arch-enemy (and cousin) Nasica.  His headless body was then tossed into the Tiber.

It is precisely the distance of distant power that patricians exploit - then and now. 

Nigellus Tiberius Farageus?

Julian Lindley-French

NATO: What Would Europeans Fight For?

Alphen, Netherlands. 6 May.  What would Europeans fight for?  It is a fair question given the Russian-inspired conflict in Ukraine and growing Moscow pressure on EU and NATO allies in the Baltic States.  It is an even fairer question given the provocative piece The Economist ran this week entitled “What would America fight for?”  This followed a tetchy 28 April remark by President Obama when he wondered out loud “why is it that everybody is so eager to use military force”.  The essence of the piece was that Asian and defence under-spending European allies are worried that the US taxpayer will not defend them any more.  It is the wrong question. The real question is this; would Europeans actually go to war to defend Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania all three NATO allies and EU member-states?  I would like to say yes, but I am not at all sure any more.h the Obama administration and its views about the utility of force.  

There is undoubtedly a problem with the current Administration's concept of strategy.  Indeed, the current love-in between the Administration and the EU reflects a dangerous alignment of views between some of those around the President and the EU’s High Priests of Soft Power.  The latter believe that soft power is an end in and of itself and that there exists no place for force in geopolitics beyond a kind of armed Red Cross.  An America like the EU does not bear thinking about. 

It is equally true that after a bruising decade in Afghanistan and Iraq (and elsewhere) Americans are less inclined to involve their hard-pressed military in foreign adventures in faraway countries about which they know little.  A recent Pew survey found that 52% of Americans want the United States to become more not less isolationist.

However, the United States remains the world’s cornerstone power and without it the world is more not less likely to see a major war break out.  The problem is that the cornerstone is cracking. Even though the United State remains the world’s biggest defence spender by a factor of two it is no longer strong enough to be strong everywhere all of the time. 

The latest Defence IQ data has the US spending $640bn on defence in 2014, the Chinese second with $188bn and the Russians third on $87.8bn.  Given the Obama Administration wants to reduce US defence expenditure to $450bn by 2020 these figures actually reflect relative decline that will continue.

That is where NATO comes in.  The only true way to deter such regimes is to demonstrate to them both the INTENT and the CAPABILITY to defend Alliance territory by all possible means if needs be.  For such a deterrent to be credible Europeans have to honour the essential and yet implicit contract at the heart of the Alliance.  Small and weak allies benefit from the security of the strong and powerful in return for the equitable sharing of Alliance responsibilities.  It is a contract that has been weakened to the point of failure in recent years.

Russia’s actions against Ukraine have revealed the complete lack of political and strategic will in Europe to stand up to aggression.  It is not that they lack the means.  Britain, France, Germany and Italy all figure in the top eleven of defence spenders world-wide.  Collectively Europeans spend some $220bn per annum on defence, even though Britain, France and Germany account for over 60% of that figure.

The real problem is intent.  That does not mean war over Ukraine.  Indeed, even though Russia has run a tank right over the 1994 Budapest Convention guaranteeing Ukraine’s borders the US and its European allies are right not to seek war with Russia.  Equally, NATO is only credible if it is underpinned by the collective strategic will and military means of its members – all of its members.  To that end forget all the soft and not-so-soft power supporting campaigns and operations of the past decade.  NATO’s real purpose is to fight and win wars that threaten the freedom and independence of its members.

Russia has calculated that almost all Europeans have lost the will to fight.  This is not simply a reflection of the reliance of much of Europe on Russian energy. It is also a reflection of a Europe that has been lulled into a false sense of security by politicians who have misled the people about the nature of geopolitics. Because of that Europeans have collectively retreated from the overt political will upon which effective deterrence of aggression is established and in so doing they have collectively and critically undermined NATO.

Moreover, American and European leaders singularly fail to understand the price Russia is willing to pay to secure what Moscow sees as its long-term strategic and historical interests.  No level of sanctions will deter them or force a change of behaviour if President Putin can be seen to achieve ‘patriotic’ goals at a ‘relatively’ low cost in Russian (not Western) terms.

Therefore, to paraphrase another US president John F. Kennedy; ask not what America can do for you but what you Europeans are willing to do for yourselves and indeed for NATO.

So, would I go to war to defend Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania?  Yes and without question.

Julian Lindley-French