Nous sommes tous français maintenant!

Alphen, Netherlands. 7 January.  The news from Paris about the appalling Islamist terrorist attack on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo is truly shocking.  There is no point in speculation at present but every reason to send my thoughts and wishes to those who lost their lives this morning and to their families and loved ones.  

All I can say is that I have never felt as European as I do at this moment and that whatever our differences as Europeans this attack reaffirms my absolute belief in the values, beliefs and freedom which we must all uphold as Europeans. 

On 12 September, 2001 Le Monde ran the headline “Nous sommes tous americains maintenant”.  Let me say for the record as an English, Briton and European, nous sommes tous français maintenant!

Vive la France! Vive la liberté! Vive la fraternité! Vive l’Europe!

Julian Lindley-French

Wing Commander G.P. Gibson VC, DSO and Bar, DFC and Bar, RAF

Alphen, Netherlands, 7 January. Yesterday I visited the graves of Wing Commander Guy Gibson and Squadron Leader Jim Warwick in Steenbergen not far from my home. Gibson was a boyhood hero of mine.  In May 1943 he led the famous Dambusters raid by 617 Squadron which breached the Eder and Mohne dams in western Germany using bouncing bombs that skipped across the reservoirs like pebbles.  Gibson was awarded the Victoria Cross for Operation Chastise, Britain's highest award for gallantry.

He was killed with with his Navigator Warwick in a two-engined RAF Mosquito fighter-bomber on 19 September, 1944 acting as Master Bomber for a heavy bombing mission.  There is some controversy about how this ace pilot with 170 missions to his name met his end.  One view is that unfamiliar with the Mosquito Gibson may have simply run out of fuel, although that seems unlikely.  Another view is he was shot down by a German Me262 jet fighter but there is little evidence a Luftwaffe jet was over Steenbergen that night.  

Most likely is that Gibson and Warwick were shot down be friendly-fire.  The rear-gunner of a Lancaster bomber returning from a mission over Rheydt near Monchengladbach reported seeing a twin-engined Dornier behind and below his Lanc at about the same time and place as Gibson's Mosquito went down and fired some six hundred rounds at the target which then disappeared.  Understandably twitchy about German night fighters friendly-fire was not uncommon given the losses RAF Bomber Command were still suffering at the hands of the Luftwaffe in late 1944.

The Mosquito seems to have gone into a vertical dive because at the crash-site the plane buried itself some 9m/9.5 yards into very heavy Brabant clay.  When the remains were recovered by the Dutch people they thought at first only one airman was in the wreckage so badly mangled were the remains.  However, the discovery of a third hand and socks with the name Gibson embroidered on them told another story.

Today, Gibson and Warwick rest in a peaceful cemetery on the edge of Steenbergen.  As ever, the Dutch people treat the graves with the utmost respect, solemnity and dignity.  It is the Dutch way.  At the site of the crash there are today three streets; Gibsonstraat, Warwickstraat and Mosquitostraat with a union flag made out in tiles at the exact point of impact.

It is now over seventy years since Gibson and the 125,000 other members of RAF Bomber Command lost their lives in the struggle to free the whole of Europe from Nazism, including Germany. The price was high and many innocent civilians died because of the British and American bombing but such was the scourge of Nazism it had to be eradicated...and must never return in whatever form.

Gibson's last recorded words over the radio were, "OK. Fine. I am going home". Thank you, Gentlemen.

Lest We Forget!

Julian Lindley-French     

Managing Strategic Mass Migration

Alphen, Netherlands. 5 January.  Last week three hundred and fifty nine-migrants were rescued adrift at sea off the Italian coast on the abandoned, ageing, decrepit livestock freighter Ezadeen.  On Sunday a major demonstration took place in Dresden against immigration.  That same day a poll in a leading British newspaper said that immigration was the most important topic for the May 2015 UK General Election.  Italian authorities now estimate that the human traffickers responsible for the Ezadeen made $3m/€2.5m profit from their trade in human misery with each migrant paying between $4-8000/€3-7000 for the trip.  These people are but the latest of some 200,000 migrants who made it across the Mediterranean to Europe in 2014.  Tragically, some 3000 people paid with their lives.  Managing mass migration into the EU is one if not THE most pressing strategic issue for Europeans.  What must be done?

Grasp the scope of the challenge: This is not just a European phenomenon. According to Global Strategic Trends 2014 the world’s population will grow from 7.2bn people today to between 8.4bn and 10.4bn by 2045.  97% of that growth will occur in the developing world with 70% in the world’s nine poorest countries. Driven by demographic pressure, conflicts, globalisation and organised transnational crime the world is witnessing the first wave of strategic mass migration with profound and destabilising structural implications for geopolitics and societies. And, such migration is likely only to increase. Indeed, with states collapsing and in distress across North Africa, the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and much of Asia the imperative of people to move will grow rapidly and massively. 

Support front-line states:  87% of all refugees are in the developing world. Moreover, whilst there are some 230,000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees in Europe, there are still some 3m who remain in the region placing a huge strain on already-weakened countries such as Jordan and Lebanon.  For exanple, there are already 1.1m registered Syrians in Lebanon and some 0.5m unregistered.  Syrians now represent some 30% of the population and many Lebanese fear this massive influx will destabilise an already fragile state.  This week Lebanon will impose visas on Syrians. Supporting front-line states with aid and expertise must be a priority.

Render asylum fit for purpose: 50% of those making the perilous journey are not refugees but simply people seeking a better life and whilst no-one can blame people for that most basic of human instincts the sheer numbers involved means immigration must be controlled. In 2013 EU member-states issued 2.3m work permits.  However, if host populations are to accept those with a right to stay they must be confident that those with no right to stay are returned to their country of origin.  European publics have no confidence in immigration systems at present or the leaders who promise endlessly to 'fix' the problem but never do. What is needed is a humane return policy allied to sanctions on those third countries who refuse to take back their nationals and yet receive EU/national aid.   

Recognise migration as a Europe-wide challenge:  It is utterly unfair to expect hard-pressed countries like Spain, Greece and Italy to cope with such flows on their own.  As regular readers of this blog know I am wary of more Europe but mass migration is one area which needs a collective European position.  Relations between EU member-states are already suffering due to a lack of either policy or effective enforcement.  Italy is no longer finger-printing many new arrivals who simply move untracked onto other parts of Europe.  France, which under EU rules should be dealing with the migrants seeking to enter Britain from Calais, is threatening to push UK border controls back to Dover to force the British to deal with the problem.  Britain refuses to deal with many of the so-called ‘pull factors’ which make the UK such an attractive destination. Equitable resettlement across Europe is needed for those with a right to stay to avoid beggar-thy-neighbour national immigration policies.  Instead of trying to destroy states the EU must act as the co-ordinator of collective state action.  A first step would be a far better system for identifying migrants and their countries of origin.

Make agencies work together: A critical element in any policy must be the interdiction and prosecution of human trafficking gangs.  Europe’s attempt to deal with the traffickers has thus far been lamentable.  Schengen Area external border controls must be tightened by in turn strengthening Frontex, the agency responsible for assisting EU member-states with securing the EU's external border. At present Frontex has only 300 people working for it in Warsaw.  Efforts must also be made to ensure Europol and Frontex work together more effectively which is not the case today.

European politicians and their electorates are both wrong about strategic mass migration. Politicians are wrong to wish the issue away.  Electorates are wrong to believe there are any quick fixes.  The essential dilemma for Europeans is how to maintain humanitarian principles and protect societies from the extremism, social instability, wage suppression and crime which unfortunately such migrations also (and undoubtedly) spawn.  Managing mass migration is a strategic issue and as such must be dealt with strategically and honestly.

Julian Lindley-French  

2014: The Year Grand Illusions Burned Away

Alphen, Netherlands. 30 December. In December 1914 British and German troops declared an unofficial Christmas ceasefire, swapped tobacco and so the story goes played a football match together in no man’s land, which apparently the Germans won, on penalties no doubt.  With the hindsight of history that uplifting moment of humanity was but an interlude in a bitter World War One struggle that would see many of those who took part dead within the year.  In a sense the West, particularly the European West, has been enjoying just such a ceasefire with history these twenty-five years past since the end of the Cold War.  Four grand strategic shifts made 2014 the year that grand illusions finally burned away.

The Return of Realpolitik in Europe: In 2014 President Putin did something many fellow Europeans thought impossible; he used force to resolve a territorial dispute to Russia’s apparent advantage.  Putin cited the encroachment of both the EU and NATO on Russia’s borders as justification and in so doing destroyed the comforting illusion that balances of power and Realpolitik had been banished from Europe forever.  On 26 December President Putin re-issued Russia’s 2010 military doctrine albeit modified to reflect a particularly aggressive tone.  The message is clear; in spite of the sanctions and the collapse in the oil price which has so damaged the Russian economy the militarisation of the Russian state will continue in 2015, even though the policy is doomed to end in failure.  Expect 2015 to see NATO and its members probed and provoked further by Russian forces.

The Return of Geopolitics: China’s increasingly assertive stance and growing pressures across South and East Asia highlight the world’s new seismic, systemic epicentre and a new domain of warfare.  North Korea’s December 2014 cyber-attack on Sony Pictures on the eve of the release of a film satirising Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, is a sign of things to come.  The US responded to the attack by shutting down the internet in North Korea. With China and Russia engaged in industrial levels of cyber attacks the use of the ether as a domain for warfare is very much the future of geopolitics in the twenty-first century. The aim is not so much the permanent destruction of an opposing state’s centre of political gravity, à la Clausewitz.  Rather, in the growing struggle between the liberal and the illiberal the aim is to keep open societies permanently off balance through attacks and the threat of attack on critical national infrastructure thus changing the balance of resources liberal states commit to protection at the expense of projection.  Expect this struggle to intensify in 2015.

The Struggle over “Ever Closer Union”:  In December Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said in an interview that the EU should stop trying to micro-manage the lives of Europeans and focus instead on the big things.  On the face of it Juncker’s call marks a new pragmatism and a possible new balance between the EU member-state and an increasingly onerous and ponderous Brussels.  It is also a classic description of a federal state in which grand strategy, most notably foreign, security and defence policies are controlled by a federal hub, whilst the ‘states/provinces’ focus on the those issues most immediate and most pressing to the needs of the people.  In reality, and in the wake of Juncker’s illegitimate May 2014 coup, Juncker was simply drawing the federalist battle-line for 2015.  If the EU is to take on greater responsibility for the 'big issues' that means more not less Europe and ultimately the final end of state sovereignty in the EU.  Britain will never accept that and nor would it appear will Germany or France.  Expect the implicit geopolitics of the EU to worsen in 2015, especially if Greece as seems likely votes for the anti-austerity leftist Syriza movement and the Eurozone crisis re-ignites.

The Emergence of the Grand Strategic Super-Insurgency: In a December interview General John Allen, President Obama’s Special Envoy to a sixty-state anti-IS coalition, said that Islamic State was “…one of the darkest forces that any country has ever had to deal with”.  What makes IS different is its level ambition and a a bizarrely grand leadership that believes genuinely they can change the world. As such IS marks the beginning of a super-insurgency committed to the very destruction of the state first in the Middle East and then the world over.  Paradoxically, unlike the unworldly AQ leadership IS uses the means of the state against the state, funding its campaigns from the sale of state resources such as oil and gas and using force, disinformation and brutality in much the same way as many modern states.  Critically, IS is secretly backed by state and factional supporters who believe mistakenly it can be instrumentalised to their more narrow ends.  2015? Although President Obama has re-committed US forces to support Afghanistan it is likely IS will continue to seek to wreak havoc across the Middle East and through terrorism beyond.  It may also endeavour to extend its ‘brand’ into Afghanistan in conjunction with some elements of the Taliban.  Therefore, 2015 will prove the schwerpunkt in the first phase of what is going to be a long struggle with IS. 

Now that the grand illusions of the past twenty-five years have been burned away the challenge for leaders will be to confront the hard realities they masked and bring their publics with them.  This challenge will prove no harder than in Europe where leaders have for too long avoided hard realities and in which the disengagement of European security from world security has led to the grandest of all illusions – that soft power in the absence of hard power carries any influence at all.  If Europe and by extension the world is to be made more secure in 2015 then the European powers led by Britain, France and Germany must return to fundamental principles of statecraft.  That will mean in turn the sustained, collective and skillful management of state affairs in a world changing fast and not for the better through the sound and considered application of all forms of power soft and hard.

By the way, in December 2014 the British and German armies replayed that famous football match and the British won 1-0!  Well done, chaps!

Happy New Year!

Julian Lindley-French

Who Rules Europe 2015?

Alphen, Netherlands. 19 December. One of America’s Founding Fathers Alexander Hamilton said, “It is not tyranny we desire; it’s a just, limited, federal government”.  He could well have been speaking for 2014 Brussels.  2014 has been another bad year for the EU nation-state.  Federalism is creeping forward via the back-door at an inexorable rate and national leaders with the exception of Angela Merkel look ever more like powerless puppets trying to mask the extent of their own impotence.  The EU leadership vacuum emboldened federalists sufficiently to hijack the May 22 European Parliament elections and seize the European Commission.  The false legitimacy upon which Jean-Claude Juncker based his coup d’états was both impressive and dangerous and frames the central question for this coming year; who rules Europe?

Two reports this week demonstrate just how hard it will be to answer that question. The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) this week published the last seven of the so-called Balance of Competences reports.  The previous batch of reports on a whole host of issue pertaining to the impact of the EU on British governance all reflected the FCO’s assumption that more Europe is better.  However, these final reports sneaked out cynically before Christmas to avoid too much debate implied something else: an EU engaged in an existential struggle with the member-states and a Brussels that uses maximalist interpretations of treaties to interfere ever more deeply into national governance and life.  Moreover, the ‘subsidiarity’ that David Cameron keeps hopelessly banging on about as critical to EU reform is seen by the Brussels institutions as a bit of a joke and a form of lip service to increasingly irrelevant national legislatures and executives. 

The second report was scribed by Sonia Bekker, a respected, Dutch left-of-centre academic at Tilburg University.  Entitled “Revitalising Europe 2020 to strengthen the Social Dimension” the paper appeared on the web-site of the think-tank Policy Network and warned against the drift towards an ever more bureaucratic union.  

Bekker is no Euro-sceptic, far from it. She applauds the aim of the Europe 2020 strategy to ensure 20 million fewer Europeans are at risk of poverty and many more actively participate in the European labour market.  However, she highlights what she calls the growing contradictions in EU “socio-economic governance” and suggests ever more EU regulation is more a curse than a solution. 

Specifically, Bekker questions whether taken together the Stability and Growth Pact, macroeconomic imbalances procedure, budgetary co-ordination, the so-called euro-plus pact and the Europe 2020 strategy itself actually amount to coherent policy.  She points out that these initiatives emerge from a range of different treaty areas and implies that the EU is in effect trying to enmesh the member-states in a giant spider’s web of over-regulation.  She also points to the growing gap between the rules imposed on Eurozone and non-Eurozone members.

Critically, she also concurs with the FCO’s concerns about EU mission creep.  Specifically, she highlights the European Commission’s “Country-specific Recommendations”. In the past such recommendations were broad suggestions for actions that a member-state might take at the most macro-economic of macro-economic levels.  However, the Commission is now ‘instructing’ member-states in areas such as healthcare and social security and using social funds to discipline member-states.  This tendency reflects a maximalist, back-door federalist approach that was seen to good/bad effect by the judgement this week by the European Court of Justice instructing Britain over its use of visas for non-EU citizens.  The aim: not to solve Europe’s manifold problems but to extend EU competences. Bekker states, “National challenges are often far too complex to formulate feasible and effective solutions at EU level”.  She also calls for more not less subsidiarity. “The key targets are the Europe 2020 goals and countries should have enough space to find their own way towards these over-arching goals”.

Now, I am a pro-European, EU-sceptic who like Abraham Lincoln and John Locke has a profound mistrust of distant, effectively unaccountable power, which is what the EU is fast-becoming.  Equally, I am not prepared to press the Armageddon button and call for the dismantling of the EU just yet.  Indeed, it is still my firm belief that a reformed EU can play a vital role in building a stable Europe and aggregating and exerting European influence in the world.  The tragedy for Europe is that the endless back-door, functionalist power grab by federalists far from helping Europeans solve its manifold problems is causing political paralysis. 

However, for such a vision to be realised back-door federalism must be stopped.  In its place a new political settlement is needed that preserves the primacy of the nation-state, establishes clear rights and protections for those member-states not in the Eurozone, and properly embeds state power in a legitimate but subordinate institutional framework with accountability first and foremost guaranteed by national parliaments working in harness.  THAT would represent a true balance of competences.

Sensible members of the European elite know full well that a European super-state can only come with time and a profound shift in political identity.  If they try and rush it millions of us would struggle to prevent it. My grandfather did not fight for liberty and democracy in World War Two to see it emaciated and strangled by a distant, super-bureaucracy overseen by a sham parliament in which I do not believe. 

In reality what Jean-Claude Juncker and his ilk seek is a twenty-first century European realisation of Hamilton’s just, limited federal government.  Unfortunately, no-one actually knows what precisely ‘just’, ‘limited’ and ‘federal’ mean in twenty-first century Europe.  In other words the EU is a political experiment and as such it is not one that is working.  Today, the EU is political paralysed as weakening states no longer sure of their sovereignty tussle with a powerful but as yet insufficiently strong Brussels probing to extend its competences. 

It is political paralysis more than any other fissure or friction that is preventing Europeans from addressing the root causes of its many problems.  Moreover, it is political paralysis that sooner or later will trigger a social, economic and political explosion if not addressed.

Who rules Europe 2015? Who knows.

Merry Christmas!

Julian Lindley-French 

Nuts!

Alphen, Netherlands. 16 December.  Seventy years ago today not far from here deep in the depths of a bitter winter in the snows of the high Ardennes four German armies including the the 5^th Panzer Army under General von Manteuffel and the 6^th Panzer army under SS General Dietrich launched Operation Watch on the Rhine.  This massive attack on US forces became known as the Battle of the Bulge.  The frankly bizarre strategic aim of the offensive was to retake Antwerp from the British and Canadians with the aim of splitting the Allies.  The operation was doomed from the outset as Hitler desperately tried to rekindle his success of 1940 when he had driven tanks through the Ardennes forest against divided British and French forces.

The German offensive initially made some progress although never fast enough to achieve what by any military standards were extremely optimistic objectives, mainly due to the stout defence of relatively small US formations.  Von Manteuffel and his 5^th Army employing new tactics made good use of the poor weather that prevented the tank-busting Royal Air Force Typhoons and US Army Air Force Mustangs from striking the 54000 German troops and 345 tanks committed to the offensive, including the powerful Tiger IIs.  German forces were hampered at all times by fuel shortages and the very snows that the offensive had used as cover.  Moreover, by late 1944 German forces in the West were a shadow of their former selves and the implied link to a new Blitzkrieg was illusory and although the Luftwaffe did launch attacks it was only at the cost of losing their last capable air force.

The offensive pivoted on the little Belgian town of Bastogne, the junction of 11 tarmac roads vital if German forces were to make the rapid progress upon which the entire offensive hinged.  The town was defended by the 101^st Airborne Division (Screaming Eagles) and Combat Command B of the 10^th Armored Division.  By 21 December German forces had surrounded Bastogne but were unable to take it due to the determined American defence. At one point, the officer commanding US forces Brigadier-General Anthony C. McAuliffe received a note from his German opposite number Lieutenant General Heinrich Freiherr von Luttwitz seeking his surrender.  McAuliffe’s written reply has passed into military folklore; “Nuts!”

German forces then attempted to bypass Bastogne but it was by then already too late as improved weather enabled air attacks to slow their progress.  And, although Bastogne faced a series of assaults by 25 December all the attacking German tanks in the vicinity of the town had been destroyed.  On 26 December elements of Patton’s 4^th Armored Division broke through to relieve the 101^st in Bastogne, although the Screaming Eagles famously suggested that although low on ammunition, food and medical supplies they did not in fact need relieving.

Critically, the German offensive stalled before the River Meuse halfway to Antwerp where the British XXX Corps held the bridges over the Meuse at Dinant, Givet and Namur using air power and their Tiger-killing Sherman Firefly tanks to marked effect.  With General Patton’s Third Army pushing hard up from the south it became progressively clear to German commanders that they were in danger of being trapped in a pocket not dissimilar to that which had effectively destroyed an entire German army at Falaise in Normandy the previous August. 

Initially, Hitler refused to countenance a withdrawal and in keeping with Germany Army doctrine repeated counter-attacks and infiltration raids were launched by German forces.  However, in spite of local gains all these attacks ultimately proved futile and on 7 January, 1945 Hitler finally gave the order for German forces to withdraw.  However, it was not before 25 January that the Allied line was straightened and the pocket closed.

 

As per usual at this time success was not achieved without a good deal of bickering between US General Patton and British Field Marshal Montgomery as Patton’s Third Army attacked north from Bastogne and Montgomery came south.  There was an interesting footnote to the Battle of the Bulge.  American commanders accused Montgomery of attempting to claim credit for what in the end was a hard fought American victory.  They had a point because for every one British soldier committed to the battle there were between 30 and 40 Americans.  However, von Manteuffel himself said of Montgomery, “The operations of the American First Army [of which Montgomery had assumed command on 20 December] developed into a series of individual holding actions.  Montgomery’s contribution to restoring the situation was that he turned a series of isolated actions into a coherent battle fought according to a clear and definite plan”.

However, the Battle of the Bulge was an overwhelmingly American victory and must be remembered as such.  Indeed, “The Bulge” was the largest and most costly battle US forces fought in World War Two.  Over 600,000 US soldiers took part in the battle of whom some 83,000 were injured and some 19,000 killed.  German forces are believed to have lost killed, wounded or captured between 67,000 and 100,000 personnel.  In effect the Battle of the Bulge marks the end of offensive operations by the Germany Army in the West.  On 12 January, 1945 the Soviets launched the massive Vistula-Oder offensive which committed over 2 million infantry and over 4000 tanks to the battle and marked the beginning of the final destruction of Nazism.

Winston Churchill said of The Bulge, “This is undoubtedly the greatest American battle of the war and will, I believe, be regarded as a famous American victory”.

 

Julian Lindley-French 

Russian Spring?

Alphen, Netherlands. 12 December. Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote, “To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s”.  The 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine has been informally dubbed “Operation Russian Spring” by the Russian military.  Why did Russia invade Ukraine? How did Russian forces perform? What are the implications for future Russian strategy and action?  The work of my colleagues Dr Igor Sutyagin of RUSI and Dr Frank Hoffman of the National Defense University has informed this blog for which I am grateful.

Why did Russia invade Ukraine?  By the end of 2013 it was clear to Moscow that Russia would ‘lose’ Ukraine.  On 17 December last year the Russia-Ukraine Action Plan was agreed between President Putin and soon-to-be ousted Ukrainian President Yanukovych.  The plan was a clear statement of Russia’s determination to ensure Ukraine remained part of Russia’s “sphere of privileged interest”. Specifically, the plan included the abandonment of the Crimean Kerch Peninsula by Ukraine and the ceding in effect and in perpetuity of Sevastopol and the Black Seas Fleet base to Russia.  However, the Euromaidan revolution which began on the night of 21 November, rendered the plan redundant and acted as a trigger for the implementation of long-standing Russian plans to seize parts of Ukraine if deemed necessary to protect strategic Russian interests. 

These strategic interests comprised and combined military, economic and energy factors. Ukraine is central to Russian military strategy as Kiev has traditionally supplied anti-tank sights, air-to-air missiles, ICBM components, engines for cruise missiles and uranium for nuclear warheads.  Indeed, according to Dr Sutyagin there are some 259 Russian military bases that are dependent on Ukraine. 

Critically, the Russian fleet base at Sevastopol is vital as a platform for Moscow’s military influence not just in the Black Sea but beyond into the Mediterranean and across the Middle East.  Some have suggested Novorossiysk as an alternative. However, the Novorossiysk base cannot sustain a major fleet due to climatic conditions.

Economic considerations also seem to have been prominent in Moscow’s thinking.  At the time of the February 2014 invasion of Crimea Moscow was concerned about the protection of key gas export pipelines, such as the proposed South Stream project.  Last week Moscow cancelled South Stream, partly it seems because of a growing struggle with the EU which sees Russia’s attempt to use energy as a geopolitical lever as breaching energy-market rules.  This is a clear example of the culture clash between a Moscow that sees power as the essence of balance and an EU that is enshrined in a law-based concept of international relations. Indeed, implicit in the entire Ukraine crisis is the growing fear of the EU in the elite Russian mind, primarily as a form of latter day German empire.

Interestingly, the discovery of 4 trillion cubic metres of shale gas under eastern Ukraine has also concentrated the Russian mind.  Indeed, the deployment of Russian forces around Ukraine’s eastern borders suggests a posture that designed to remove that specific region from Ukrainian control if needs be.  Moscow had hoped that the invasion of Crimea would have been enough to force Kiev back into Russia’s “privileged sphere” but by late March 2014 it was apparent that was not the case.  When Ukrainian forces began to defeat the chaotically-disorganised separatists in late-2014 in the Donbass Russia acted. 

How did Russian forces perform?  “Operation Russian Spring” has demonstrated the growing ability of Russia to project military power and at the same time the force’s still many weaknesses.  Specifically, the operation has demonstrated Russia’s continuing problems with generating the kind of manoeuvre forces upon which such operations rely.

The invasion of Ukraine involved the mobilisation of some 90,000 troops from 27 separate units that were massed around Ukraine’s borders in early 2014.  Russia today has some 10 Field Armies, which are the equivalent to a US division.  Five of Russia’s field armies had to deploy all their so-called “manoeuvre units” to invade Ukraine and other such elements were drawn from across Russia to ensure the operation worked.  

However, it is the use of force in combination with 'strategic ambiguity' that has proven both novel and effective.  The use of disinformation and ambiguity worked long enough to keep European leaders off-balance for sufficient time to render the invasion a fait accompli, which is the current status.  However, the operation did not succeed in all of its aims.  For example, Russian Air Force aircraft were painted in Novorossiya colours to maintain the pretence of exclusively separatist action.  The aim had been to capture Donetsk Airport to provide a base for this ‘ghost’ air force but in the face of strong resistance by the Ukrainians in defence of the airport that plan seems now to have been abandoned.  It would appear that as of December 2014 Moscow is re-thinking its strategy and focusing on consolidating what gains it has made.

What are the implications for future Russian strategy and action? Last week in his State of Russia speech President Putin confirmed that Moscow would spend 23 trillion roubles ($700bn) by 2020 to modernise Russia’s armed forces with a specific focus on developing advanced expeditionary and deployable forces.  In spite of the current economic travails facing Russia it would be a mistake not to take the President at his word.  Indeed, it will take a cataclysm for President Putin to be dissuaded from his “Defence First” strategy.  

The 2010 Defence Modernisation Programme will be pursued to its conclusion, albeit erratically and often incompetently and it will not realise the force it promised of 1 million men under arms, 70% of whom will be equipped with most modern equipment (compared with 10% in 2010).  Equally, defence spending rose by 18.7% this year and will continue to command some 20% of all public investment in the years prior to 2020.  By 2020 Russia will have a markedly more capable and more deployable force.

Assessment: For the past five years President Putin has been centralising power on himself and his own office and ‘securitizing’ the Russian state through the increasingly influential National Security Council.  The process has itself intensified the classical Russian paranoia and prejudice about the West in which President Putin deeply believes and on which the strategy is based.  Several of his speeches have warned about foreign influence of which to his mind the so-called Colour Revolutions were proof.  

Russia’s strategy also reflects Russia's inherent weakness – size versus strength.  Russia simply faces too many challenges across too large a strategic space that stretches from the Arctic to the Far East to prevail everywhere.  Therefore, the current policy of limited aggression masks an essentially declinist and defensive strategic posture.  However, a militarily-capable but weakening Russian state could pose far more of a real danger than a strong Russian state.  Therefore, the West must expect friction, exploitation of weakness and opportunism as Russia attempts to exert its influence by occupying the space between war and peace.  Consequently, and in effect, Russia has invited through its actions the re-imposition of a containment strategy by the West.

In essence the 2014 Ukrainian crisis is a clash of strategic cultures and as such it is a struggle over strategic principle.  On the one side is a Europe that rejects spheres of influence in favour of a community model of international relations.  One the other side is a Russia determined to re-establish a classical sphere of influence in 2014 Europe and with it what Moscow sees as Russia's lost influence and authority.

 

Julian Lindley-French