Five Star Praise for “Little Britain” (amazon.co.uk)

Alphen, Netherlands. 7 April. In an act of shameful and shameless self-promotion this blog is devoted to five-star reviews of my latest, and very reasonably-priced, book “Little Britain: Twenty-First Strategy for a Middling European Power” (amazon.co.uk).  One former German defence minister described the book as a “first-class example of the difference between strategy and politics”.  Enjoy!  I did.

Professor Simon Serfaty, Professor and Eminent Scholar, Old Dominion University & Zbigniuew Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Geostrategy, CSIS, Washington DC

“One thing is sure: there is no room in the consensual bandwagon for Julian Lindley-French. But he, in turn, has no time for and little patience with those people whose most daring thought is to jump in it. I have known, heard, and read him for many years: he never stopped challenging his interlocutors, and having read his most recent book on Little Britain, I am now totally sure he never will either. Two immediate consequences follow from this condition. First, few, if any, will or can agree with everything he writes. That would be too much to expect from the reader and more than what Professor Lindley-French wants. Second, most, if not all, readers will gain from his writing, either by strengthening or challenging their own thinking. So, whether a scholar, a pundit, or a policymaker – whatever your status – hurry up and have a look at this book. It’s worth your time.

But it is also worthy of the moment, set in the broad strategic landscape, as well as in a transatlantic and European context. A world that is being recast, an America that seems adrift, and a European Union that is fading cannot afford a Little Britain that stands passively on the sidelines: “a big country” that “acts like a little one” – a “Belgium with nukes,” too proud to withdraw but too weak to lead and not strong enough to matter.

Relative to the United States especially, the need now is not merely for allies that are or sound willing but also are and remain militarily capable, politically relevant, and broadly compatible. Compatibility will always be there, but capabilities are dwindling and relevance is fading. As I write these lines I have in mind two recent Washington Post and New York Times reports published in successive days last month on Britain’s military decline (March 13 and 14 respectively). Absent Britain, as happened in Minsk when a dubious accord over Ukraine was negotiated by France and Germany with Russia, America’s faith in Europe is significantly diminished. Remember: Obama gave up on his idea of “unbelievably small” strikes against Syria after Parliament voted down David Cameron’s intention to be part of those strikes. Seemingly, the idea of being left alone with the French did not prove appealing to the current U.S, president. Credibility matters and France remains short on this side of the Atlantic.

Go read this action-oriented book – you’ll enjoy and learn from it”

Professor Paul Cornish, RAND, Cambridge

“Julian Lindley-French is one of the most knowledgeable, trenchant and provocative commentators on UK, European and international security and defence. Little Britain is his most recent book and is a tour de force. This is far more than a plea for more defence spending; Lindley-French argues for structural change within the UK defence and security establishment. Rather than call for more more warships, more armoured vehicles, more aircraft and so on, Little Britain points to the urgent need in Britain for national strategic vision, confidence and competence. With the next Strategic Defence and Security Review due to begin in the UK soon after the May general election (whichever party or parties is in government), Little Britain will be essential reading for policy-makers, journalists and the concerned general public”.

L. J. Hartman

“Bringing the original up to date since the Crimea/Ukraine and ISIS happenings. A good book remains good and worth a read if you are interested in current affairs, world politics & potential resolutions”.

Unknown Reader

“In the run-up towards the 2015 election this book is a timely reminder of where the UK stands within the wider world and what the future may hold. The efficiency of narrative isn't to be underestimated, rivalling Stephen Holmes 'The Matador's Cape' in its ability to present an insightful well defended series of arguments while educating the reader. This book should not be the province of the academic alone but for the concerned citizen who wants to understand what is happening behind the news. Here then, is not only a devastatingly accurate assessment of the state of the Kingdom in early 2015 but a warning of what is to come. The solutions and choices outlined by Professor Lindley-French offer some hope that we are still a power to be reckoned with and will continue to find our way in the wider world if we have the courage to take the lead”.

Julian Lindley-French

JLF’s Guide to the British General Election

Alphen, Netherlands. 1 April. Today is April Fool’s Day so it is entirely appropriate that I write a blog on the forthcoming British General Election, which officially kicked off this week with a sustained barrage of lies, nonsense and utterly disingenuous disinformation.  Therefore, for those of you out there who suffered the ignominious moral turpitude of being born on the wrong side of the Atlantic and/or English Channel (if you were born on the wrong side of both at the same time you have no-one but yourselves to blame) here you will find all you need to know about the forthcoming hustings. 

Core message: The most important thing to understand is that General Election 2015 is a good old-fashioned 1960s-style class war.  The British political Right is primarily the preserve of the Eton College-educated aristo űber-class, “make ‘em cheap, flog ‘em high” ultra-big business, and gin and tonic-drinking, golf-playing small business.  The political Left has been finally, irrevocably and completely captured by British university lecturers (‘intellectuals’), their former students and their utterly unworldly view of everything and everyone.  Indeed, what passes for ‘debating’ these days in British universities normally involves the far Left debating the utterly implausible with the hard Left, fuelled by politically correct but completely irrelevant research and, of course, copious amounts of cheap booze (alcohol). 

The Conservative Party: (Motto - “Long-Term Self-Importance Plan, small government at any cost, and a rollicking good time for the chaps”.)  

Leader: David Cameron (Old Etonian ‘OE’, Lord Blagger and Upper Class Twit of the Year). 

Policies: Whatever big business wants.

Aim: To be in charge as that is what we ‘OE’ types do – noblesse oblige and all that.

Assessment: Bonkers rich, in the pocket of big business and but determined to achieve a champagne surplus by the end of the next parliament in 2020 at whatever the cost.

Supporters: In-bred aristocracy, Old Etonians. bloody big businessmen, landed gentry, women in tweed suits and sensible shoes, and nouveau riche (“oh please”) small business-type persons in the process of being house-trained. Intellectuals-banned (apart from Oliver Letwin (fellow ‘OE’)), no university lecturers welcome.   

Views on the EU: Somewhere over there, I think?  Didn’t Boris go to Brussels once, or was that London?  Full of the French, or is that Belgians? Hun not too far away either.  But big business paymasters say we must stay in EU to ensure cheap labour, so we will con the peasantry with a pretend in-out referendum.

The Labour Party:  (Motto - “We grow money on trees, and spend even more.”)

Leader: ‘Ed’ “Keep the Red Flag Flying” Miliband (Belgian Socialist of the Year, Chief Hampstead Intellectual. Call sign: ‘Geek’, aka ‘Wallace’). 

Policies: Soviet-lite statist

Aim: Re-nationalise everything and anything that moves under the rubric of ‘fairness’.  However, under no circumstances tell anyone until after the election.   

Assessment: Really bonkers. No idea where the money comes from but can think of a zillion ways to spend it.  We are all immigrants really.

Supporters: Power-hungry class warrior trade union barons, ageing trade unionists in south Wales who still think Labour is working class, minorities of various persuasions ‘invited’ to Britain by the last Labour government to re-create class war, everybody on benefits, lefty ‘wimmin’ who think men should be banned in the name of equality, AND mid-ranking university lecturers who are by and large lefty ‘wimmin’. 

Views on the EU: No referendum - far too democratic. Britain should be part of Belgium.

The Liberal Democrats: (Motto: “More Europe, Scrap Britain!”)

Leader: Nick Clog (Dutch Liberal of the Year and pretend Sheffielder). 

Policies: Not immediately apparent.  However, if they ever had any policies other than their traditional “we disagree with both Conservatives and Labour about everything” they were abandoned some time ago when they joined the Coalition Government and became yellow Tories. 

Assessment: Nothing to assess but clearly completely bonkers.

Membership: Declined somewhat in recent years.  There is apparently a nice lady in Chiswick, another rumoured to be hiding somewhere around Cheltenham, and an ‘activist’ (oxymoron if ever there was one) at the University of the M6 near Keele.  The remaining three are high-ranking university lecturers teaching semantics.

Views on the EU: Closet and not-so-closet Euro-federalists. Want to rig forthcoming British EU referendum by giving everyone in the EU a vote.  Whatever Brussels wants goes.

 

United Kingdom Independence Party: (Motto - “What do we want? The 1950s! When do we want it? Then!”)

Leader: Nigel (‘Nige’) Farage (Pretend Bloke and Beer Drinker of the Year). 

Policies: Rebuild the British Empire in Essex

Aim: To get everyone to accept that Johnny Foreigners were essentially a mistake but can be corrected with an Australian immigration points system.  Burn all intellectuals at the stake.

Assessment: Certifiably bonkers.  And, as the Aussies can’t count, UKIP’s one policy could prove problematic.

Supporters: Everybody over 70, anybody BUT university lecturers (“lefty, pinko, Trots”) and their fellow travellers in the Metropolitan (London) liberal elite….and no foreigners!

The Green Party: (Motto - “All power is bad. Back to the fifteenth century!”)

Leader or chair or “really slightly more equal than the rest of us” person: Nathalie Bennett or Caroline Lucas or as it is a Wednesday Claire from Bristol.

Policies: Romantic tree-huggers.  “We will let you know”.  Yet to be decided. Need to consult the runes and the druids. 

Aim: To move everyone to the other planet upon which the Greens live.

Assessment: Clinically insane.  The Greens are in effect an anarcho-syndicalist union who want to save the Earth by living on planet cloud cuckoo. And, anyone who asks a serious question is an oppressor. 

Membership: Very clearly clinically insane members of the philosophy faculty at Sussex University, i.e. all of them.

Views on the EU: The Hapsburg Empire is a good thing – no power.

Scottish National Party: (Motto: Referendum? What Referendum?)

Leader: Alex Salmond or is it Nicola Sturgeon?

Policies: Nationalist romantic. 

Aim: To really piss off the English and to claim the ‘no’ vote in the Scottish referendum never happened.

Assessment: They have been at the Scotch far too long.  Their one and only policy is Scottish independence and to hell with the rest of ye with an independent Scotland funded by a a petro-economy, albeit without the petro.  Consequently, Scotland would revert to what it has always been – a rock stuck on the end of England.

Supporters: Assorted members of the Clan Lunatic Celtic Fringe all of whom suffer from an inferiority complex caused by the Scottish Football Team repeatedly, usually and always losing to England.  In fact, losing to England at everything, all of the time apart from some irrelevant little skirmish back in 1314 which they forever bang on about.

Views on the EU: If it really pisses the English off it must be a good thing.

Plaid Cymru (Motto: “Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwilliantysiliogogogoch–easy for us to say”)

Leader: Indecipherably Welsh

Policies: Unutterably Welsh

Assessment: Impossible - Welsh

Membership: Unspeakably Welsh

Views on the EU: Is Welsh the official language?  Brussels seems to speak the same gobbledygook!

On Thursday 7 May millions of ordinary, decent British people will need to decide a government from a ‘choice’ that ranges from the clinically-insane to the terminally self-interested.  In the end it will come down to either Prime Minister Dave “Lord of the Blaggers” Cameron or Prime Minister Ed “aka Geek, aka Wallace” Miliband.  Not surprisingly the bulk of the British people are as confused and as undecided as I am, not least because they are now daily bombarded with ‘facts’ that taken together represent the greatest work of political fiction since Victorian Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli wrote “Sybil”. Disraeli once also said, “lies, damn lies, and statistics”.  If he were alive today given the disinformation all the parties are peddling he surely would have said, “lies, damn lies and politicians”.  As Winston Churchill may well has said, "Never has so much nonsense, been peddled for so long, by so many".

Hey ho! Only 37 days to go!

Julian Lindley-French

The Fourth Gulf War

Alphen, Netherlands. 30 March.  At the Arab League Summit this weekend in Egypt’s swanky Sharmh-el-Sheikh resort Egyptian President al Sisi said, “The Arab Nation has passed through many phases, none of which has posed as much a threat as the one we’re experiencing now”.  He chose his words carefully.  The leaders of Pan-Arabism and the states they represent believe they are facing two potentially existential threats – anti-state Sunni fundamentalism in the form of Islamic State and Iran’s Shia-inspired regional-strategic ambitions.  The rebellion of Yemen’s Shia Houthi people may on the face of it appear to be a small war in a faraway country about which we know little.  In fact, it could mark the start of the fourth Gulf War and a reckoning of power between Arab states and Iran that has long been in the making. Why now and what are in the implications?

There have been three Gulf Wars thus far. Between September 1980 and August 1988 Iran and Iraq fought out a bloody stalemate that cost at least 600,000 lives and possibly as many as a million.  In 1991 a US-led coalition retook Kuwait from Saddam Hussein after he had invaded the small desert sheikdom in August 1990.  In March 2003 the US led another coalition that defeated and occupied Iraq ostensibly to prevent Saddam acquiring weapons of mass destruction. The 2003 invasion proved so controversial that together it led in time to a profound loss of western self-confidence, a crisis in US leadership and the effective end of Britain and other Europeans as serious military powers.

Today all of those strands of ambition and irresolution are coming together to create the conditions for a new general Middle East war focused on the Gulf but with consequences that would reach far beyond it.  Ever since Ayatollah Khomenei overthrew the Shah in 1980 the Islamic State of Iran has had ambitions to dominate the Middle East.  However, as an essentially Shia Persian state in a largely Sunni Arab region Tehran found it difficult to export its creed of pan-Shia Islamism/statism. 

To generate ‘credibility’ on the Arab Street Iran made Israel its target of choice and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict its casus belli.  Tehran has been conducting a long proxy war against the Jewish State via Hezbollah in Lebanon and by supporting the Shia-leaning Alawhites in Syria to which President Assad belongs.  With the 2003 collapse of Saddam’s Sunni-dominated Baghdad regime, the 2011 withdrawal of US forces from Iraq and the emergence of a Shia-dominated regime Iran has been able to extend its reach across much of Iraq and by extension the Gulf region. 

On the face of it Tehran seems willing to accept a de facto, non-declared ‘alliance’ with the West and its allies to defeat Islamic State. However, the current struggle with Sunni fundamentalists only delays the coming power struggle for regional-strategic dominance in the balance-of-power tinderbox that is today’s Middle East.  It is against that shifting kaleidoscope of power, weakness and allegiances that the Yemeni strikes must be seen.  At the core of this struggle is the deepening stand-off between Iran and Saudi Arabia.  

In 2014 Saudi Arabia surpassed Britain to become the world’s fifth biggest defence spender.  For many years Riyadh’s expensive military was seen as boutique force, a plaything for the super-rich Saudi royal family. No more.  Riyadh’s 2013 intervention in Bahrain to suppress discontent and the use of predominantly Saudi air power now to check Yemeni rebels suggest this powerful force will be at the forefront of an emerging Saudi-led coalition as Arab nationalists seek to both expel Iran from Iraq and Syria and defeat Sunni fundamentalism.

It will be an unlikely coalition with some even more unlikely fellow travellers.  First, the Saudi-led the Gulf Co-operation Council is openly aligning itself alongside Egypt and Jordan.  The purpose is twofold – to construct a coalition and to buttress weak states in the struggle against the Islamic anti-state and Iranian subversion.  Second, although no such tie would ever be admitted, Israel is by extension a de facto fellow traveller with this group, at least until the Iranian threat is diminished.

It is in such a strategic context that this weekend’s Saudi air-strikes in Yemen, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s recent speech to the US Congress warning about an Iranian nuclear deal, and today’s critical talks in Geneva over that self-same deal must be seen.  If the Geneva talks succeed there is a small, just a small chance that other regional arms control agreements could be fashioned that will help to ‘build-down’ tensions and de-escalate the growing military confrontation.  Of course, such a ‘vision’ pre-supposes that a Geneva deal would also see a profound shift in the direction of Iranian foreign and security policy.  As yet no such shift is apparent.

The West?  Explicit in Riyadh’s use of air power in Yemen is an implicit move by Saudi Arabia to establish regional-strategic leadership.  Riyadh is acting partly because like many Arab states that lean towards the West they have lost confidence in the United States to prevent Iran, its nuclear programme and its regional-strategic ambitions.  As for the British and French, the former power-brokers in the Middle East, a conversation I had recently with a very senior Jordanian revealed the extent to which Amman believes London and Paris have lost the regional-strategic plot and the rest of Europe with them.  Therefore, it is not just the battered peace of the Middle East that is hanging in the balance in Geneva today, but the tattered banner of the US and the wider West.

If the Geneva talks fail, or the ‘agreement’ to halt the Iranian nuclear programme is a temporary sham to provide President Obama with some form of foreign policy legacy, the strategic consequences will be profound.  Indeed, if Iran moves to build the bomb the pressure on the GCC, Egypt, Syria, and even Israel, to launch a pre-emptive war against Tehran could become irresistible.  That is the implicit message in the Arab League decision this weekend to create a new Arab Rapid Reaction Force.

Furthermore, a fourth Gulf War could well involve nuclear weapons and more likely than not drag in Russia, the West, and possibly even China.  

Have a nice day!

Julian Lindley-French

Serbia and the New Game of Thrones

Belgrade, Serbia. 27 March. As I arrived in Belgrade this week to speak at an excellent event organised by the George C. Marshall Center Serb Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić recalled the 1999 Kosovo War and the NATO bombing: “We remember, and everybody else should have in mind, we Serbs have a long memory and will never forget. Each of the 78 days, each of the victims will be remembered”.  Radical nationalists then ritually burnt EU, NATO, US and Kosovar flags in a show of defiance and to underline the Prime Minister’s point.  Europe is losing Serbia in a new and very dangerous Game of Thrones because of Russia, unresolved history and strategic indifference.  Indeed, unless Europe and the wider West re-engage properly and quickly with Serbia the Western Balkans could again descend into chaos.  

Serbia sits at a pivot of the emerging Game of Thrones between Russia and the West.  As I left Belgrade’s Nikola Tesla Airport on my way to the hotel I drove past a very prominent Gazprom-sponsored sign showing the Serb and Russian flags entwined in mutual and historic embrace.  During my visit I spoke to two Serb friends, one so senior that he must remain nameless, and the other Dejan Miletić, President for the Center for Globalization Studies, a redoubtable, patriotic but pragmatic Serb.  In both conversations the deep, enduring ties between the Russian and Serb peoples were immediately apparent as was the desire of Serbs to forge closer ties with the EU.  Finding a balance between the two sets of relationships is as vital as it is difficult.  

Russian money is everywhere apparent in Belgrade.  And, with Serbia this year facing a €2bn/$2.16bn black-hole in its national finances Belgrade is clearly vulnerable to expanding Russian influence.  It is equally self-evident here that Moscow seeks to extend such influence for geopolitical reasons and it would be naïve in the extreme if Europeans did not realise this. President Putin and his Game of Thrones concept of power – succeed or die – envisions extending Russian influence in the Balkans to keep both EU and NATO leaders politically and strategically off-balance.  

Nor can there be regional peace without an accommodated Serbia and yet such an accommodation will also be hard to realise.  Indeed, today’s Game of Thrones is about far more than Serbia’s place at today’s grand strategic seams.  As I glanced through various glossy tourist brochures each and every one showed a map of Serbia that determinedly included Kosovo, which remains a vital part of Serb history, identity and the Orthodox faith. 

Furthermore, Belgrade also sits at the nexus of a series of regional-strategic fissures forged during the wars of the 1990s which whilst papered over remain deep and dangerous.  As the Serb-centred former Yugoslavia imploded then President Milosëvić tried to reinvent Tito’s realm in the form of a Greater Serbia.  The subsequent wars with Croatia, in Bosnia-Herzegovina and over Albanian-leaning Kosovo, whilst brought to an end by NATO firepower, have never been resolved politically and Serbia retains a powerful influence network across the region.

My respect for Serbs and Serbia is deep and abiding but I am also utterly conscious how easy it is for Serbs to cast themselves (and their politics) as the victims of others  However, with Montenegro now independent, Croatia and Slovenia in the EU and Albania, Croatia and Slovenia members of NATO Serbia must be brought into the Western fold or lost to it, with all the possible consequences such a loss could entail.  In mid-January this year NATO and Serbia agreed the new Individual Partnership Action Plan (IPAP). Whilst Belgrade observes a strict policy of military neutrality it is vital that this plan is acted on and every opportunity used to make Serbia feel a partner of NATO rather than a victim of it.  

However, it is EU membership that remains the Holy Grail for Serbia.  EU accession negotiations finally began on 21 January, 2014 but it is going to be a long road before Belgrade takes its rightful place at the European Council.  This is not least because of the status of Kosovo will need to be resolved before membership is possible.  Therefore, in the interim it is vital that the EU and its member-states continue to support Serbia and be seen to do so.  ‘Support’ means helping Serbia overcome the endemic corruption that still pot-marks Serb politics and life in general.  It will also mean countering the large Russian investments in Serb civil society, particularly in the political and social sciences as Moscow buys influence and sways intellectual opinion in Belgrade as part of its Game of Thrones.

With the right commitment from fellow Europeans in particular I am still confident that this most important of Balkan powers can find its proper place in the region, Europe and the wider world.  Prime Minister Vučić said that Serbia sought to be: “A decent and well-ordered country”.  “Every factory we build”, he said, “…is our victory. Every Serb who can work peacefully in Kosmet is our victory.  Serbia in Europe is our victory”.

Shortly after the 1999 Kosovo war I went to Belgrade to attend a high-level meeting to discuss the future.  The meeting place was well-chosen for the team of which I was a part was invited to sit at a table over-looking the old defence ministry which had a large hole punched in its façade by an American cruise missile.  Serbia has come a long way since I sat looking at the burnt-out shell of the old defence ministry. However, Serbia still has a long way to go if the new Game of Thrones is not to see the return of Serbia’s history of tragedies and deny the Serb people their rightful place in an ordered European order. 

Julian Lindley-French

Operation Plunder: Combined, Joint and Engineered

Alphen, Netherlands. 23 March Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower said; “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable”.  Seventy years ago this morning as I write Operation Plunder was underway as the 51^st Highland Division (Dempsey’s 2nd British Army) & Crerar’s Canadian 1^st Army stormed across the Northern Rhine River into Germany. The airborne operation in support of Plunder was the largest airborne operation of World War Two, far bigger than the failed Operation Market Garden of September 1944 and the attempt to cross the Rhine at Arnhem.  1625 transport aircraft were deployed, together with 1348 gliders escorted by 889 fighters and 22,000 airborne infantry dropped into Germany. 2,163 fighters supported the ground operations in support of the 80,000 British and Canadian troops that crossed a twenty-mile stretch of the Rhine between Rees and Wesel.

In a sense Operation Plunder was a mini-Overlord, a re-run of the June 1944 Normandy landings, although the US and British-led crossings were not simultaneous.  The US 9^th Armored Division had famously captured the Ludendorff Bridge near Remagen on 7 March. On 22 March, Patton’s Third Army crossed the Rhine into Germany and on 23 March, the US First Army broke out of the Remagen bridgehead.

What is interesting about Plunder is that the operation demonstrated that for all the frictions that existed between American and British military commanders the allies had finally perfected the military art of combined (multinational) and joint (tri-service) operations.  However, whilst the experience gained in previous operations was to prove invaluable the role of military science was vital. Since 1943 experiments and preparations for just such an operation had been underway in Yorkshire on the River Ouse and helped foster a much greater understanding of the challenges such a contested operation would face, the specialised equipment but above all the innovation that would be vital if such operations were to succeed.

Critically, for Operation Plunder 8000 Royal Engineers came under the command of the Spearhead Force XXX Corps (Lt. General Sir Brian Horrocks).  Moreover, 22,000 tons of assault bridging was brought forward, together with 25,000 wooden pontoons to get armour across the river quickly, 2000 assault boats, 650 storm boats, 120 river tugs, 100 kms of balloon cable and 340 kms of steel wire rope.  The balloons were used to help winch the ferries and rafts across the river and came under RAF command, whilst the Royal Navy constructed an anti-mine boom upstream of the landings to help prevent the Germans from floating mines downstream.   And all of these preparations were achieved in almost total secrecy.

Such planning and preparation was vital.  The 500 metre front XXX Corps attacked was defended by the German 8^th Parachute Division, with elements of the 6^th and 7^th Parachute Divisions covering their flanks and with the 15^th and 116^th Panzer Divisions in reserve.  Whilst weakened these elite forces put up fierce resistance after they recovered from their initial shock and repeatedly counter-attacked in the classic and highly-effective manner the Wehrmacht employed during World War Two.

What are the lessons for today?  Operation Plunder was in effect an inland multinational, air-maritime-amphibious operation in support of a major land offensive.  With the creation of the Readiness Action Plan at the NATO Wales Summit last September NATO is again considering how it would conduct major combined, joint combat operations in defence of the Alliance.  Now, by its very definition NATO is built around a concept of force that is both combined and joint. However, years of campaigning in Afghanistan and elsewhere have to some extent denuded the combinedness and jointness of the multinational formations at NATO’s core.  Such formations must be re-built.

Furthermore, with the investment in military power by illiberal states and actors, weapons-technology proliferation and the disinvestment of liberal states in their military capacity and capability a radical solution is needed to maintain the military balance and thus credible defensive and offensive capabilities.  Indeed, if the growing gap is to be closed between NATO’s shrinking military capability, military capacity and the range and widening scope of possible and likely future mission and campaigns then radical solutions must be embraced.

My core message is this: NATO must forge a ‘force singularity’, a tight force focused on tight, effective deployable command and control in which ‘combinedness’ and ‘jointness’ becomes much more organic i.e, a reflex, with forces far better able to rotate in the battlespace and across the mission spectrum and thus offer commanders capability, capacity and flexibility. 

Such a new NATO ‘force singularity’ will not come without much effort. Naturally, concept design and force planning will be to the fore.  However, the key element will be a change in strategic mind-set from political leaders through to commanders.  Indeed, such a force will only be realised if leaders and commanders are really willing to “think outside of the box” (instead of uttering that now tired phrase as a tired mantra) and properly embrace radical experimentation, exercising and education.

Operation Plunder was forged on the battlefield and emerged only after many disasters but it also reflected a willingness to try new approaches and methods.  NATO forces are going to have to reinvent themselves in peacetime for a possibly very different but equally dangerous future.

On 24 March, Winston Churchill crossed the Rhine and came under fire.  As ever with an eye for history Churchill wanted to be the first foreign leader to cross into Germany in over 140 years and some 241 years after his illustrious ancestor Marlborough had defeated the French at the Battle of Blenheim in Austria in 1704.  As he met General Eisenhower Churchill said, “My Dear General, the German is whipped. We’ve got him. He is all through”. 

The rest, as they say, is history. Planning is indeed everything, but so is thinking!

Julian Lindley-French

Revisiting the Funky Gibbon

Rome, Italy. 20 March.  “The five marks of the decaying Roman culture: concern with displaying affluence instead of building wealth; obsession with sex and perversions of sex; art becomes freakish and sensationalistic instead of creative and original; increased demand to live off the state”.  Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a master-piece.  It is also a hideously-long, bloody pompous master-piece, a pomposity was the academic mark of his eighteenth century age. Of course, there is absolutely no academic pomposity whatsoever in the twenty-first century world, anywhere.  Sitting here on the Aventine Hill close to where the Temple of Diana once stood my mind is cast back to those carefree days when I was an Oxford undergraduate studying Modern History.  A time of long, greasy hair punctuated by long, greasy Genesis albums and occasional bouts of ‘study’ during which I was forced to read the long, greasy Gibbon. And yet when I now re-read my Gibbon from the lofty heights of perfect wisdom and maturity I am struck by what insights the man had on the eternal human political condition and our enduring and not-so-endearing ability to eternally screw things up.

The EU and its member-states have become far too focused on displaying affluence rather than building wealth.  Europe’s refusal to properly prepare its economy for the hyper-competitive twenty-first century means decline and decay is inevitable.  Early signs of that are all around me here in a Rome that has not been troubled by economic growth since 1999. However, it is Greece rather than Italy that really reveals the dangers of perpetual self-delusion.  Athens is still resisting any proper reforms to its economy in spite of promises to get real.  Sadly, Greece is not alone. Whilst Ireland and Portugal have undertaken serous reforms other southern European states still hanker after a return to the Mezzogiorno lifestyle that can no longer be afforded.

Gibbon was a curmudgeon when it came to matters of sex and art.  However, I am struck by how much the politics of sex dominate discourse these days.  It is my firm belief that the rights of all minorities should be protected, and I am a firm supporter of gay marriage.  However, be it the politics of race, gender or sex so many in the European elite seemed to have forgotten that whilst minority rights must be protected a society can only flourish if the majority are respected.  As a white, fifty-something male I sometimes get the impression I am the font of all evil and that it is my duty to be discriminated against ‘positively’ and routinely to ensure ‘equality’, even if that is at the expense of quality and the promotion of mediocrity.

However, for me Gibbon’s most striking suggestion was that Rome was lost because people simply came to believe that living off the state was their right.  In Europe ‘living off the state’ takes two forms.  At the European level it manifests itself in the belief that the taxpayers of eight EU member-states are expected to pay for the tax and non-taxpayers of the remaining twenty.  The transfer of funds from the North and West of Europe to the South and East of Europe, most evident in the Greek bailouts, was meant to be a temporary phenomenon to help bring economies up to a level of mutual enrichment. And yet, as I make my way around Europe I am struck by how many EU member-states now see such transfers as permanent and theirs by right.

At the popular level the battle over the welfare state in its various incarnations across socialised Europe suggests a culture of entitlement that is now so ingrained in Europeans that they believe their well-being to be somebody else’s problem and at someone else’s cost.  This is not something that the creators of the Welfare State in the years after World War Two ever envisaged, nor is it sustainable.  Berlin is right about this; it is not German meanness to suggest that Europeans reform and prepare to succeed in a competitive world.  Is is simply the harsh, unforgiving reality of a harsh, unforgiving world.  Europeans either modernise together or fail together.

What makes Gibbon still so funky is precisely his understanding that what killed Athens and Rome ultimately was that their desperate desire to protect themselves from change doomed them to change.  As Gibbon wrote, “In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security.  They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom.  When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.”

Gibbon also offered another warning.  Rome fell because its ancient civic virtues were eaten away from within by competing religions to the point where society and governance collapsed.  Europe?

Julian Lindley-French

BBC: State within a State

Alphen, Netherlands. 16 March. As Britain has declined as a world (and European) actor, it has become the pre-eminent world (and European) commentator. If there is one post-imperial British complex that persists, it is the firm belief amongst Britain’s elite Establishment that whilst it might be useless at running Britain, it still knows best for everybody else.  At the pinnacle of British self-delusion sits the BBC – Britain’s master strategic communicator.  However, over the past twenty years the BBC has shifted from commentator to social engineer and been steadily captured by the left-liberal elite in the process.  Today, the world’s most famous broadcaster is a failing state within an increasingly uncertain state.

Last week a scandal broke that demonstrated not just the extent to which “Auntie Beeb” has shifted to the political Left, but the gap that now exists between the leftist elite that run the BBC and the mass of the British population.  “Top Gear” is the world’s most profitable documentary programme which the BBC very profitably exports to over 100 countries world-wide.  Until last week it was led by an irreverent Yorkshireman called Jeremy Clarkson who specialises in winding up the Metropolitan liberal-left elite who run the BBC. 

Now, I get Clarkson, even though at times I find him childish and nauseating. He was born one year after me and 10 miles/18 kilometres from me.  We both share a strong Yorkshire culture which is essentially an inbuilt distrust of power and its many conceits, and a willingness to say so.  The comparison ends there. Whilst Clarkson has turned his irreverence into a multi-million pound empire I am a bloke who writes blogs.

At the heart of the dispute is the relationship between the BBC’s oh-so politically-correct elite management and their oh-so politically-correct left-liberal world view, and the mass of ‘blokes’ for whom Clarkson is their champion and whom the BBC by and large despises.  Now, let me pause at this juncture, and provide some hard detail of the spat.  Clarkson is alleged (alleged) to have punched a producer during a row and has been suspended as a consequence.  If Clarkson did indeed commit violence then I have no sympathy for him.  He must go.  However, the BBC leadership has been out to get Clarkson for years because he does not accept the left-liberal bias the BBC now routinely presents as ‘fact’.  As of late over 1 million people (most of them ‘blokes’ no doubt) have signed an online petition to have Clarkson re-instated. I suspect many of them see this as the perfect opportunity to attack the BBC.

Normally I would not have considered this material for my strategy blog. However, given the high-global profile of the BBC as a strategic communicator the capture of it by one political mono-culture is in danger of making it little different to RT (Russia Today) – a purveyor of sophisticated (and not-so-sophisticated) propaganda rather than impartial analysis. 

The drift to the political Left is revealed in the BBC’s editorial policy and the move towards social engineering implied therein.  For example, over the past month the BBC has been running a trailer for its flagship radio news programme “Today” featuring artist Grayson Perry.  Mr Perry delivers a two-minute leftist rant which the BBC then presents as ‘fact’ under the rubric “To see the world clearly…”  Moreover, all of the BBC’s comedians are of a left-wing persuasion with open-season declared by the BBC on anyone with a centrist or centre-right viewpoint.  The BBC openly champions feminism and all forms for ‘positive discrimination’ as a matter of course and fact. 

Now, as a social progressive I happen to believe in many of these issues.  Indeed, I have little sympathy for nostalgia, Britain is a multicultural country and such a country will only survive and prosper in this world if it is open to all the talents irrespective of race, gender, orientation, etc.  And yet the BBC is not only closed to at least half of the talents, it is actively championing the other half and that is not its purpose.

Worse, the BBC sees itself as a state within a state.  For example, Britain has a hybrid system of measurements which incorporates both the metric and imperial systems.  For longer measurements, such as road signs, miles are still used as the official measurement.  Now, one could argue that as a European country Britain should switch to kilometres, but that is not government policy. And yet the BBC now routinely refers to ‘kilometres’ in its domestic news programmes, which a mass of the population simply does not understand. In other words, the BBC is deciding national policy.

Two of my friends are senior BBC reporters.  They have both told me of occasions when key elements of their stories have been ‘pulled’ because senior editors feared that the facts might offend an ethnic minority or another group.  Indeed, the BBC routinely refuses to discuss issues of race, religion. and indeed Europe, that might in some way be deemed to offend left-wing sensibilities.  Consequently, trust in the BBC has plummeted.

The BBC’s decline into factionalism is a salutary lesson of what happens when a broadcaster is captured by a political mono-culture.  The BBC of today is a far cry from the broadcaster that became the voice of freedom during World War Two.  Indeed, it was the BBC which broadcast two lines of a Verlaine poem which informed the French Resistance that D-Day was imminent. 

Rather, the BBC today is a left-wing advocacy organisation that wants to make left-wing programmes for left-wing people at the expense of everybody else.  There is nothing wrong in that per se but because the BBC has abandoned impartiality it must at the very least re-discover balance.  Above all, the BBC must learn again to be modest.  It is a broadcaster, not a state within a state and it could again if properly led be a broadcaster of which Britain, and indeed Europe, could be proud.

Julian Lindley-French