In Cold Geopolitics Syria is the New Belgium

“One very unpalatable but unfortunately clear reality is that the West is already engaged both in a form of cold geopolitical world war and a world-wide confrontation with terrorist entities; it needs the mind-set to face that”.

William Hopkinson and Julian Lindley-French, The New Geopolitics of Terror, 2017

Empty Covenants, Blind Swords

Alphen, Netherlands. 10 April. Syria is the new Belgium, a place where cold geopolitics is conducted with the people little more than expendable chattels in a new, misplaced Kiplingesque Great Game. It is a ‘game’ the West is losing, and which reveals the real transatlantic divide between a Trump White House that has power without a plan, and a Europe that has endless plans without power; a divide that President Putin is only too happy to drive his ‘troika’ (sled) through.

Thomas Hobbes once famously said that “Covenants without the sword are but words and of no use to any man’. Equally, swords without strategy are but blind flailing.  Empty covenants and blind swords are all too apparent in the ‘policy’ response of Europe and America to the latest and atrocious use of chemical weapons against civilians in Syria.  However, for all the ghastliness of dead and dying children to emerge from Douma there has been little coverage of the vacuum in Western policy and power that has enabled Syria, Russia and Iran to treat international convention with such impunity.  The Trump Administration talks of a “forceful response”, but to what end? With the exception of France Europe is either silent or masking its irresolution and spinelessness behind a façade of fake legalism. 

McMasterful

On 3 April outgoing US National Security Advisor Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster made a farewell speech at the Atlantic Council to honour last week’s visit to Washington by the presidents of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.  During that speech, McMaster called for the West to counter Russia’s use of hybrid warfare via reform and better integration of Western power in all its forms. He also called for enhanced cyber defensive and offensive capabilities, as well as the need to enhance investment in security and defence. All well and good. However, McMaster left the critical lacuna to last when he called for the West to show renewed “strategic confidence” to defend “our values and our way of life”.

It is also the West’s collective loss of ‘strategic confidence’ and cohesion that is enabling Russia, an economic pigmy, to act with impunity, as it has done so for some ten years. It is a loss of will which is enabling Assad to treat America’s ‘red lines’ with scorn. It is the loss of both on both sides of the ‘pond’ which is enabling Iran to harbour ambitions of regional-strategic domination with the backing of Moscow.  And, it is such weakness that also underpins the lack of any consistent Western policy and thus permits ISIS and Al Qaeda to believe that whatever battles they lose they will eventually win the systemic war which they are fighting. 

The Art of Geopolitics

Much has been made of President Trump’s failure to understand the art of geopolitics, his neo-isolationist tendencies, and his seeming belief that international relations can be conducted as a series of one-off negotiated transactions between leaders. Last week’s seemingly off-the-cuff remark that he wants US troops out of Syria as soon as possible would certainly have emboldened Assad, Putin and Tehran.  However, Europe’s geopolitical incompetence is equally dangerous: Europeans have to stop talking about everything and finally start doing something about some things.

The central thesis of The New Geopolitics of Terror is that Syria is the epicentre of a series of tectonic struggles that are interlocked and interlocking – the future governance of Syria, global reach Salafist terrorism, a trans-border fight to the death between Turkey and the Kurds, the struggle for regional-strategic dominance between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which also involves Israel and Turkey, and the new cold geopolitics between liberal and illiberal states with Russia leading the charge of the latter.   

The book offers four policy options for the West none of which are politically palatable.  The first option is pretty much what the West is doing – nothing. Yes, there may be the occasional punitive missile strike on Syria that makes the rubble bounce, but such pin-prick attacks simply reveal Western impotence. The second option would be to organise serious humanitarian intervention and support.  Such an effort would require a significant investment of money and skill and would at least keep the serious problems of Syria (and Iraq) in the face of public opinion. However, it would be to all intents and purposes a virtue-signalling Band-Aid on a gaping wound and do little or nothing to ease competing and contending interests. The third option, which President Trump seems to have ruled out and Europeans would rather not think about, would to undertake a serious military intervention to finally defeat ISIS and to end Syria's civil war, even if that means confronting Russian forces (and not just their ‘mercenaries’). Such an intervention doubtless prove expensive in lives, politics, and treasure.

The final option would be for the West to undertake serious military and other interventions to reshape the region, which would be even more expensive than option three. The risks involved would indeed be great and doubtless hasten the coming strategic showdown between elements of the West and Russia (which is now virtually inevitable). Such an intervention would also possibly alienate a China that might, just might still be willing to play a constructive role, in return for Western recognition that Beijing is a global actor.  

However, on balance, the worst option would be to do nothing.  Therefore, and at the very least, the West together should now formally engage on a thoroughgoing consideration of its options and be seen to do so. Even the impression of a West finally getting serious about a systemic conflict on Europe’s doorstep might help create more space for a negotiated end to the Syrian War. One other option may be to also invite China into the room. Russia? Not at this stage. Moscow would only see such an accommodation as weakness, not dialogue.  One thing must be clear to all: no one state can end these struggles, and any number of states will be unable to end them quickly.

Cold Geopolitics

This is one of those moments in the strategic affairs of states where leaders must not only demonstrate they understand cold geopolitics, but have the wherewithal and the sheer courage to craft enduring policy and strategy.  It will not be easy.  As Hopkinson and I wrote, “The greatest obstacle of all, in practice, is likely to be the unwillingness of Western publics and governments to do what is necessary, for the required time and with the appropriate commitment of resources, both human and materiel”.

When we wrote The New Geopolitics of Terror the Syrian War had not yet reached the next level of escalation as we warned it would. It now has. The struggles currently underway in Syria will shape the twenty-first century, in much the same way that the battle in Belgium shaped the twentieth century. Western leaders need to understand that.

Therefore, perhaps the best way to finish this blog is to echo the end of the book in which Pericles, the great leader of Athens is quoted. “Freedom”, he said, “…is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it”.  That was also the essential message of McMaster’s speech.  Is the West up to such a challenge? No, not on current evidence.  

Julian Lindley-French

Skripal: Countering (Again) Strategic Maskirovka

“Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.”

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

What is Strategic Maskirovka?

Alphen, Netherlands. 5 April. It is not what actually happened that matters, but what people want to believe happened. That is the key element in any successful disinformation campaign. In May 2015 I published a paper for the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, of which I am a Fellow, entitled NATO: Countering Strategic Maskirovka. In the piece (which is, of course, brilliant and so reasonably-priced it is free and can be downloaded) I wrote, “Maskirovka is the traditional Russian use of military deception…Moscow has established a new level of ambition – strategic Maskirovka – by which disinformation is applied against all levels of NATO’s command chain and wider public opinion to keep the West politically and militarily off balance”.   This week Moscow has been in full Maskirovka mode in an attempt to discredit British claims that Russia is behind the 4 March poison attack on Sergei and Iulia Skripal. It has been aided and abetted by some not untypical incompetence from British officialdom who opened the door for a Russian propaganda drive and, of course, the Kremlin’s own useful idiots here in Europe.

Where is Skripal at? 

Sergei Skripal remains critically ill and is unlikely to recover following the use of the Novichok nerve agent. Encouragingly his daughter Iulia is showing some signs of recovery.  Both will need life-long care if they survive.  This week Russia has also sought to exploit an implied inference from Gary Aitkenhead, CEO of the UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down, that he could not confirm the “precise source” of the nerve agent. Read the full transcript of the Sky News interview as I have and Aitkenhead does not question Russia’s responsibility for the attack. Rather, he sticks to the narrow focus of his laboratory’s remit to identify the type of agent used and points to wider intelligence efforts that confirm the source and origins of the attack.  This morning the British revealed that they, “have a high degree of confidence in the location” of the Russian laboratory which is the source of the nerve agent. This is as much of a ‘we know you did it’ as British Intelligence tradecraft will ever confirm.  The full intelligence picture has been revealed by the British to the allies who continue to support the British case.  

Why now? 

There are two primary reasons for the latest Maskirovka offensive, Firstly, to distract from questions that Russia needs to answer about a possible breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention. Secondly, to divide the coalition of condemnation Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office has skillfully helped to construct in the wake of the attack. Moscow’s employment of strategic Maskirovka will continue at today’s United Nations Security Council meeting at which Moscow will endeavour to discredit the 13 March letter from British Prime Minister, Theresa May to UN Secretary-General António Guterres. The letter states that it was “highly likely” Russia conducted the attack.  Moscow tried and failed at a meeting yesterday in The Hague of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to secure a ‘joint’ investigation into the attack.

How is Russia conducting Maskirovka?

Strategic Maskirovka is one of a trinity of elements Moscow is developing in its future war strategy – disinformation/deception, disruption and destruction.  The methodology is designed to exploit the many seams that now exist in Western societies by forcing public opinion to blunt any meaningful policy response to Russian coercion.  Moscow’s strategy is aided and abetted by some European governments who do not want the extent of their vulnerability to Russian interference revealed. For example, when the Americans put their National Planning Scenarios online some years ago several European states demanded they be taken down for fear of revealing just how vulnerable they had permitted their states to become.

Who are the main targets of Maskirovka? 

There is a range of fellow-travellers and useful idiots in Britain and elsewhere in Europe who for a range of reasons want to believe the Kremlin on just about everything. There has been a collapse in trust between power and the people in many European states, of which Britain is to the fore.  For too long London has allowed the gap between rhetoric and reality to widen enabling Russia to build a ‘plausible’ case in the minds of unworldly elements in a brittle population.  They are being instrumentalised by Moscow to its strategic end.

Sadly, Maskirovka has been aided and abetted by academia. In a 2 April article for the Washington Post entitled Russia and the Art of Provocation, Lynn Ellen Patyk, a Dartmouth assistant professor, argued that Britain’s very response has reinforced the Kremlin’s world-view of provokatsiia and a Russia facing a grand anti-Russian conspiracy.  The message from the piece is clear: by expressing legitimate outrage to an act of Russian aggression on its own soil Britain is playing into Putin’s hands. Rather, Britain should have turned the other cheek.  This is nonsense. If Britain had indeed turned the other cheek the Kremlin would simply have concluded that Britain is so weak that Moscow could further intensify coercion without fear of sanction or reprisal. Part of the purpose of Maskirovka is to test the limits of Russian action.

What to do?

Firstly, Britain has to get its head properly around the future war of which strategic Maskirovka is a part and design a new joined-up deterrent across the new matrix of battlespaces which include information, cyber and force. Secondly, NATO needs to be a willing partner in the twenty-first re-creation of deterrence and defence. Thirdly, NATO and the EU together must forge a new balance between protection of peoples and projection of defence (this is one of my core reasons for rejecting Brexit) with countering Maskirovka to the fore with a hardened concept of strategic communications.

Is Skripal just about Britain?

No, Maskirovka is a challenge to the security and defence of all Europeans and beyond.  This week the presidents of the three Baltic States – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - stood alongside President Trump in the White House. They celebrated a century of co-operation with the US and thanked the President for acting as the guarantor of their countries’ security and defence. Call me old-fashioned but the principle that peace-loving, democratic states, however big or small, should hold their own political destiny in their own hands is worth defending.  The Baltic States suffer interference and intimidation from their Russian neighbour on a daily basis.  If the British are unable to defend themselves from such aggression then just what credibility their defence of others?  

My information is clear: Russia either acted or commissioned someone to act to murder Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, United Kingdom, on 4 March 2018. The Kremlin did not want a large number of other British citizens and others killed or injured but that was the only limit on the operation.  Which begs one other question I once posed in a hard-hitting article in a Russian journal – what does Russia want?

Julian Lindley-French

RAF 150?

“Never in the field of human conflict, has so much been owed by so many to so few”.

Winston Spencer Churchill

20 August, 1940

RAF 100

Alphen, Netherlands. April 3, 2018. The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the oldest, independent air force in the world, and the world’s most iconic. Stood up on April 1, 1918 and formed from the merger of the British Army’s Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service the Battle of Britain image of ‘chaps’ in Spitfires and Hurricanes defeating the might of the Nazi Luftwaffe is an enduring image that underpins a view of Britain and the British even to this day. What does the RAF’s past say about the RAF of today, and what of its future?

The RAF in April 1918 was a massive force of some 22,000 aircraft.  It had established air supremacy over the battlefields of the Western Front, and it had pioneered the use of aircraft as strategic bombers.  On 8 August 1918 at the critical Battle of Amiens the RAF also pioneered what later become known as ‘Blitzkrieg’, the coordinated use by General Rawlinson’s III Army of aircraft, tanks and infantry to blast through the German front-line. Between the wars, the RAF even pioneered the use of aircraft as part of ‘imperial policing’ in places such as Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq).  

A Force for Good?

It was during the Second World War that the RAF really established its reputation as a strategic force.  During the 1930s Britain had steadily developed the world’s most advanced air defence system by combining radar (‘radio detection finders’), a highly-effective command and control system, and state of the art fighter aircraft.  In parallel, slowly but with increasing tempo, the RAF also developed a powerful strategic bomber force capable of striking targets deep in Germany, albeit at first with limited accuracy.

By way of power comparison on the nights of 14 & 15 November 1940 515 light bombers of Luftflotte 3 carried out a series of attacks on the English city of Coventry. Eighteen months later, on the night of 30-31 May 1942, the RAF carried out the first 1000 heavy bomber raid on the German city of Cologne.  As the then Head of RAF Bomber Command, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris said, “The Germans have sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind”.

Many contemporary historians question the strategic utility and indeed the morality of the revenge carpet bombing of German cities.  Even Churchill thought the February 1945 destruction of Dresden by some 800 Lancaster heavy bombers a raid too far, even though he was also aware of the message it sent to Stalin and the Red Army.  There are also questions about the value of investing of so much of Britain’s war effort in the bomber offensive and the butcher’s bill: of the 125,000 Bomber Command aircrew, 55,000 lost their lives.  However, for much of the war, RAF Bomber Command was the only way for Britain to strike at the heart of Nazi Germany.  For much of the Cold War the RAF’s V-Force of Vulcan, Victor and Valiant bomber provided London with a strategic nuclear deterrent that also enabled a declining Britain to use the confrontation with the then Soviet Union to mask its own decline and retreat from empire.  

A Force for Innovation?

For me, the defining feature of the RAF has been innovation. For all the image of British ‘chaps’ and their ‘derring do’ the RAF was (perhaps) the least class ridden of Britain’s three armed forces, the most international (many nationalities either fought with the RAF or in it), and the most technologically innovative.  Two famous squadrons, 9 and 617, point to the centrality of innovation to the ethos of the RAF.  Indeed, innovation was a defining feature of such iconic high-precision raids as the May 1943 destruction of the western German dams and the October 1944 sinking of the 42,900 ton German battleship Tirpitz.  Both squadrons were also comprised of men not just from the UK but also from across the then Dominions and the United States.

It is innovation which must be the defining feature of the RAF over the next fifty years of its story if the force is to remain a major factor in Britain strategic influence and its future defence.  There will continue to be a demand for the RAF to project and supply British specialised land forces the world over and to play its full role in Britain’s future air defence and strike missions – both from land and the sea. However, the challenge for the RAF will be to overcome the very icon it has become – the image of ‘chaps’ – if it is also to reflect and make the most of Britain today, not just Britain past.

RAF 150

Can the RAF meet the innovation challenge?  As I have seen at close quarters over the years air forces tend to be run by fast jet pilots who tend to define themselves and the forces they lead as ‘eyes on/over target’ fast jet forces.  However, technology is fast changing the very nature of air power and the battlespace in which it must contend and fight.  Consequently, RAF 150 must and will be a force able to extend across six other critical ‘spaces’: air, sea, space, cyber, information and knowledge. RAF 150 will also be a force of drones as much as manned aircraft in which sentient machines will provide at least as much of the command picture and command decisions as people.

If politicians give the RAF the means to craft new innovative ways to pursue Britain’s strategic ends RAF 150 will meet the many challenges that will come its way.  Indeed, if there is one British force that is open to talent from wherever it comes and which can rise to the challenge of change and innovation the twenty-first century will impose on Britain and its forces, it is the men and women of Her Majesty’s Royal Air Force.

Happy birthday, RAF!

Julian Lindley-French

Brexit: On the Swiss-Irish Border

“One should not consider that the great principles of freedom end at your own frontiers that as long as you have freedom, let the rest have pragmatism. No! Freedom is indivisible and one has to take a moral attitude towards it.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Alphen, Netherlands. 29 March. One year from today Britain will sort of leave the EU and maybe begin a kind of transitional/implementation/extrication period.  Last week’s agreement over ‘phase two’ of the almost Withdrawal Agreement opened the door to a hoped for (or not) future relationship between Britain and the EU, which was given a helping hand by the quite definite stupidity and incompetence of the Kremlin.  Still, there are some issues of contention that still need to be resolved, most emotively the future status of the inner-Irish border between Northern Ireland, still part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (to be sure check the front cover of Britain’s still EU burgundy passports) and the Republic of Ireland or Eire (to be equally sure check the front cover of Ireland’s still determinedly EU passports). 

For the Irish and hard-line Remainers, there is apparently no solution to the border issue other than for the British to effectively handover Northern Ireland to the EU and thus Ireland.  And, in so doing, establish the precedent for other parts of the United Kingdom (Nicola Sturgeon’s Scotland???) to secede from Britain to the EU…or scrap Brexit.  This position is, of course, complete nonsense and is simply the latest attempt to overturn the Brexit vote by those implacably opposed to it. 

Why is this nonsense? Two reasons, a Swede and the Swiss. Let me first deal briefly with the Swede. In an earlier blog on the Battle of Brexit (Analysis Paper: The Battle of Brexit, 2 March) I referred to a November 2017 European Parliament report entitled Smart Border 2.0; avoiding a Hard Border on the Island of Ireland for Customs Control and the Free Movement of Persons, written by Leo Karlsson, the former Director of the World Customs Organisation. As I stated, after quoting Karlsson at length, “…the only real barriers to solving the inner-Ireland border questions are the willingness to enact a fudge, and the time it would take to install the Karlsson system. And, of course, the political will so to do”

It is fudge which brings me to the Swiss.  For many years I either worked Geneva and/or lived in the neighbouring Canton de Vaud.  Prior to Switzerland joining the Schengen Zone in 2011 both the Canton de Geneve and the Canton de Vaud had a formal border with France and thus the EU…although at the same time it didn’t.  Drive over the border at, say, Crassier, on the road from Swiss Nyon to French Divonne and rarely would one meet either a Swiss or French douanier.  That said, I can recall one occasion when a Swiss-American friend of mine wanted to show a carpet she had bought in Swiss Lausanne to a friend in French Divonne. About 200m over the border a French douanier was waiting in ambush to undertake a customs spot-check that both the French and the Swiss conducted every now and then.  She had to pay a fine.

In fact, we residents knew of scores of places along the border where one could cross from Switzerland into France at which there was never any controlle.  In other words, for many years both the French and the Swiss adopted an entirely pragmatic approach to the border based on the principle that most decent people observe the law and that douaniers rarely if ever apprehend terrorists or hardened criminal gangs.

The French even turned their pays de Gex north of Geneva into a ‘special administrative zone’ under French control so that frontaliers, expats and French citizens who worked in Geneva, could so with minimum disruption. Every now and then the Swiss and the French would exert tighter, often intelligence-led controls at either Bardonnex or Ferney-Voltaire, but the spirit of free movement drove the border agreement.  There is no reason whatsoever why Northern Ireland could not enjoy the same status as the pays de Gex did, not least because the North is already a ‘special administrative zone’.

One year on from Britain’s sort of departure from the EU my sense is that the experience of the Swiss implies another paradox of Brexit.  Brexit is a symptom of an EU about to undergo significant change.  Some poor states will continue to seek to gather closely around rich Germany and call it Brussels-administered deeper political integration. A couple of other richer states, such as The Netherlands, may go along for the political ride, but that is by no means a cert!  Another group of richer, northern states will seek to avoid such a fate.  Consequently, a new kind of two-speed EU will emerge over the next decade. Indeed, Britain’s departure could well be hastening such change as recent developments have shown.  States that traditionally hidden in Britannia’s skirts are now openly expressing their determination to prevent further integration.

My reasons for rejecting Brexit were because I foresaw the dangerous world into which Europe is heading and out of solidarity with my fellow Europeans in Central and Eastern Europe who had fought so valiantly over so many bloody years for their freedom.  My focus today is on minimising the disruption to European security that could flow from Brexit.  Equally, I have accepted Britain’s democratic decision to leave the EU, unlike increasingly desperate Hard Remainers now calling for a second referendum to overturn the Brexit decision.  Last week’s agreement in Brussels over Britain’s withdrawal has left them whistling in the wind. 

Two things are apparent to me. First, Brexit is not the end of the Brexit story. Second, if the EU is to survive it cannot remain in the hybrid, ineffectual political space it currently occupies. The world is becoming too dangerous for that. My sense is that precisely because of the nature of change in the wider world the EU also stands on the verge of radical change.  And that within the decade there could again be a place for Britain as leader of a looser grouping of states in the EU but not subject to federalist diktat.  If not, and the rest of the EU really does embark on a journey to the centre of political integration then Brexit will simply be confirmed. 

On the Swiss-Irish border between intransigence and pragmatism.

Julian Lindley-French  

Sloan: Transatlantic Traumas

Alphen. Netherlands. 27 March. “Radical centrist populism” is on the face of it an oxymoronic contradiction in terms. And yet, that is precisely what my old friend and colleague Stanley R. Sloan calls for in his new book “Transatlantic Traumas”, which has just been published as part of the Pocket Politics series by Manchester University Press and is no doubt brilliant and very reasonably-priced.  Now, it is not my custom to praise a book I have not as yet read. but I have known Stan for over twenty years since his days at the Congressional Research Service in Washington.  The three things I have always valued in Stan are his intellectual courage, his insight, and his judgement.  Having read about the book I have no doubt it contains all three in abundance.

The focus of the book is the loss of strategic confidence in the West about the West’s role in the world, fuelled by the loss of confidence in each other.  It would be easy to suggest that this loss of confidence in each other is temporary.  There can be no doubt that Brexit and the election of President Trump have reinforced a sense of divergence that have led some commentators to question whether the West exists at all.  Ironically, and in a timely fashion, the co-ordinated and cohesive response of the West to the Salisbury attack would suggest that those predicting the demise of the West, and those seeking to accelerate that demise (Moscow!), maybe premature. 

Sloan touches on an issue that I have also been long considering – the changing nature of the West itself.  This morning Australia also announced that it was expelling two Russian diplomats for what Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called, “an unlawful use of force by Russia against the UK and her people”.  The West, it seems, is evolving and has evolved from a place into a world-wide idea of liberal democracy, free speech and a law based concept of international community.

And yet, the central argument of Sloan’s book is that the West and its inherent liberalism is in crisis. Specifically, that illiberalism within the West has brought ‘it’ (whatever ‘it’ is) close to collapse.   At the heart of the book is Stan’s long-standing concern that the threats posed by Islamist terrorism on changing Western societies allied to tailored Russian meddling in domestic political processes is generating illiberal populism of such ferocious intensity that it threatens to destroy the very ideas that the West pioneered and which define its very existence. In such a political context Brexit and Trump are mere symptoms of an illiberal backlash by large segments of a Western populace that has become deeply dissatisfied with the response of traditional liberal elite Establishments to complex problems. 

Here, Stan and I are in complete agreement. However, attractive political demagogues may appear during times of crisis with their neat sound-bites and their even ‘neater’ solutions they, in fact, offer nothing but danger.  The paradox of the West is that complexity and freedom are the twin sisters of liberty. The very pressures faced by Western societies are pressures of success for which neither nostalgia nor simplicity can afford ‘solutions’ or satisfy people many of whom have little idea why they are dissatisfied beyond a sense that ‘things are not as they were’. Welcome to change.

It is change that I think is at the heart of Stan’s thesis, and more specifically how to manage it. Sloan argues that weak and divided political centres across Western states have failed to rise to the challenges that the West’s very success has generated, such as terrorism and immigration. And, that this has created the conditions that Russia has thus far quite skilfully manipulated.

At the heart of the book is a warning: domestic unrest in Western states cannot be separated from the effectiveness of such states in the global arena.  If the liberal centre fails to once again demonstrate it has the political will, the vision and the strategies to deal with the concerns now spawning mass populist political movements the security and defence of the West will be profoundly weakened.  Brexit has already weakened the EU and there are already profound concerns in Europe and beyond that Trumpism could profoundly damage transatlanticism and NATO.

Which brings me back to Stan’s “radical centrist populism”. By employing such a concept Stan is calling upon fellow centrists to recognise that they will only seize the political agenda by recognising the scale of the risks, challenges and threats posed to the West and its societies, and by then taking the necessary radical steps to deal with such threats. The populism?  Populists are great communicators. Indeed, they tend to be little else. Stan Sloan is suggesting a new marriage between centrist policy activism and populist communication. In that case, I am a fully paid up radical centrist populist.

As I said at the outset I have not read Stan’s book, but soon will. There will no doubt be things in the book with which I disagree, possibly profoundly. However, knowing Stan as I have for many years I have no doubt that his book is worth reading and for this reason, I recommend Stan Sloan’s Transatlantic Traumas to you.

Julian Lindley-French

Time for Russia’s ‘Friends’ to Face Hard Truths

To succeed in the world, it is much more necessary to discern who is a fool, than to discover who is a clever man’.

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand

The Danger of Romantic Prejudice

Oxford, England. 22 March. The primary discipline of the analyst is to overcome the romanticism of one’s prejudices and face the hard truth of evidence.  Here in Oxford, I had one such moment of delightful prejudice on an early morning walk in Christ Church Meadow. It was what I call a Vaughn Williams moment. My favourite piece of music is Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis and as I walked in solitude with only a retiring snowscape to keep me company my mind conjured the romantic picture of a Tudor England that inspired Ralph Vaughn Williams to paint his magical 1910 musical homage to a country that never existed. Some Europeans are enjoying their own delightful prejudice over President Putin’s Russia and a really democratic and friendly country that sadly and probably may never exist. It is time for Europe (and the White House) to face hard truths about Russia.

This morning British Prime Minister Theresa May is in Brussels for a European Council meeting at which she will call for non-Russian Europeans to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the UK in the wake of the use by Russia (yes!) of a military grade nerve agent in the heart of Miss Marple England. She will point to a pattern of behaviour since the 2008 invasion of Georgia that shows President Putin has no intention of being a strategic partner of the West in all or any of its now many guises.  Indeed, with every term President-for-Life Putin (let’s not kid ourselves!) has become progressively more anti-Western. She will also suggest that Putin is now locked into a campaign of intimidation, coercion and occasional outright aggression that extends across the new landscape of conflict – from the foothills of information war to possibly one day the mushrooming mountains of nuclear warfare.

She will doubtless receive the support of several central and eastern European states who know only too well the heavy method of Russia when the Siloviki (roughly translated from Russian as ‘those from the force structure’) are in charge in Moscow.  She may even get the continued declared support of the three other members of the powerful Quad Squad – France, Germany and the United States, even though there are profound questions as to just how far Paris, Berlin and Washington will go to support Britain in its hour of need.  Doubtless, she will test to see just how qualified the EU’s “unqualified support”. As she speaks, several other states, most notably Greece and Italy, will shuffle their feet in embarrassment, but say or do little.  

A European Security Order?

This morning much of the British Press is frothing at the mouth, in the way that much of the British Press regularly froths at the mouth, about this week’s post-election letter of congratulations European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker sent to Putin.  The timing of this obsequious letter is certainly unfortunate given that two European citizens are fighting for their lives in a Salisbury hospital alongside one innocent Russian.  The inference of much of the coverage in Britain is that Juncker is more agin democratic Britain than he is for autocratic Russia.  

However, there is one phrase in the letter which captures the essence of the dilemma Russia poses to Europe and the wider West when Juncker calls on Putin to help re-establish “…a co-operative pan-European security order’. A word of caution here: Juncker’s deliberate wording has for Russians a very clear meaning and implies a new Europeans security order that excludes the Americans. If Juncker really is going down that long Russian road then he is, even more, the inappropriate man holding inappropriate office that I have always held him to be.  If ever there was a leader prone to romantic prejudice it is Jean-Claude Juncker. Indeed, Juncker seems incapable of grasping the plunging cynicism of President Putin, which is ironic. 

Putin’s Strategy

Putin’s strategy is to weaponise the rules-based system of international relations that the European Union embodies by defecting repeatedly from agreed norms and treaties.  For Putin to accept a new European security order he would need to abandon a strategy that has come to define him and his Russia.  More likely, Putin sees Juncker as one of the many useful idiots there are across Europe that serve him – directly or indirectly. As an aside, the Chinese seem to concur with Britain and other Western powers as Beijing’s ambassador to Moscow yesterday refused to attend a briefing at the Russian Foreign Ministry at which Britain was accused of carrying out the Salisbury attack.

For sake of argument, let me assume for once that Juncker and the Commission have a point by seeking to maintain dialogue with Moscow even in a crisis, and even as EU member-states consider further steps to punish Russia for an egregious act of aggression.  For some time now my friends in Italy, Greece and elsewhere have told me that I am too pessimistic about Russia and that Moscow poses little or no threat to Europe or Europeans…anywhere.  That, the only way to engage with Moscow is to befriend the Kremlin as threats only reinforce the romantic prejudice therein and its belief that Russia is still an encircled and threatened superpower.

Friends, Russians, Bogeymen?

My response? Now is the moment for such friends to demonstrate their influence in and over Moscow and convince President Putin of the benefits of co-operation with Europe and the wider West.  If they succeed, and Moscow abandons its use of coercion as diplomacy, I will be the first to congratulate and thank them for helping to lift Europe upwards towards a new era of security and stability.

Equally, the same friends need to be clear about the implications of failure. If they are merely blustering because they are too dependent on Russian energy, or simply lack the political backbone to denounce any Russian act however aggressive then they are simply victims of their own romantic prejudice. And, in their weakness, they would not only undermine the security and defence of Europe but reveal NATO to be little more than an expensive bluff, something that would certainly make the day of President Putin.

It is time for Russia’s ‘friends’ to face hard truths…and take firm action. If not, as one senior British official put it yesterday, Russia is a ‘strategic enemy’ with all the implications that has for Europe and the world beyond.

Julian Lindley-French

Skripal: NATO’s Next Steps?

“Beware the ides of March”

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

Geneva, Switzerland. 15 March. Prime Minister Theresa May’s statement to the House of Commons yesterday on the Skripal attack was proportionate given the status of the investigation and the need for an initial response. The 15 March use of the Russian nerve agent Novichok in the English provincial city of Salisbury during the attempted murder of one Russian citizen and another former Russian turned Briton is an outrageous act of aggression that must be countered.  The next step is to consider a subsequent and consequent set of responses. Yesterday, I was contacted by a senior figure at NATO and asked what I would suggest the Alliance should do in support of the UK. Given that NATO is likely to be in the vanguard of the international response my considered reaction is set out below.

Investigation and Action

In the wake of this attack, a thorough investigation must necessarily form the basis for action. The aim of any response must be to assert that NATO will respond to any attack on an ally in a robust but proportionate manner and to uphold international regimes and law relating to the use of biological and chemical weapons.  May’s decision to expel 23 Russian ‘diplomats’ from London as part of a suite of measures is just such a proportionate response. She cleverly left open the option to escalate to further measures if and when the available evidence hardens as to the source of the attack, whilst offering Moscow the chance to climb-down by ‘admitting’ it had lost control of the nerve agent.

The response must be further divided into two distinct tracks – investigation and action.  The investigation would see NATO in support of the British seeking to establish exactly the sequence of events that led to the attack and identify those who designed and carried out the attack. Whilst there is overwhelming circumstantial evidence that Russia, in some capacity, is responsible for the attack the legitimacy of any subsequent response will be strengthened if due process has been seen to have been followed.

Specifically, it would be useful to set up two expert panels, one under the auspices of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (OPCW), and another conducted by NATO allies, possibly led by France which has a similar capability to Britain in countering chemical and biological hazards. Past experience would suggest that Russia will doubtless try to interfere with such an investigation and such efforts will need to be resisted.  Equally, prior to the 2003 Iraq War London was not sufficiently skeptical about Iraq’s supposed WMD capability and locked itself into a political position from which it could not retreat.  

The Maintenance of Proportionality

There has been some suggestion that NATO triggers the cornerstone collective defence Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, the so-called doomsday article the invoking of which during the Cold War would almost inevitably have led to nuclear Armageddon. At this stage, such a response would be disproportionate given the scale of the attack and thus enable Moscow to suggest the Alliance is the aggressor.  On the eve of Sunday’s Russian presidential elections, it may well be that the Kremlin would like nothing more than to suggest to the Russian people that Russia is under attack from NATO. Given the extremely high likelihood that Moscow was involved in the attack it may also be that triggering such a response by the Alliance was central to the political design of the attack.

To invoke Article 5 would also devalue its importance and thus the gravity of its invocation in a crisis. In a sense, the Alliance is already preparing a response that is in the spirit of Article 5. The North Atlantic Council has met and offered its support to Britain re-iterating that an attack on one ally is an attack on all. NATO has also confirmed Britain’s right to self-defence under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. The attack has been reported to the United Nations Security Council and the Alliance is considering the subsequent and proportionate action it could take.

NATO Action?

Proportionality does not preclude the preparation of a robust and timely set of actions to deter Russia, or any other state actor, from ever again contemplating such an attack on a NATO ally. Indeed, even if due process has yet to be completed it is reasonable for the Alliance to assume the identity of the attacker and prepare measured and appropriate responses. There is a range of actions I have proposed that would provide a credible considered escalation in the wake of such an attack and thus reinforce deterrence: 

Reinforce the agenda of the NATO Brussels Summit: The Alliance should immediately introduce onto the agenda of the July 2018 Brussels Summit an assessment of the threat posed by what appears to be illegal Russian use of chemical weapons.  Such a debate should also perhaps take place in the context of Moscow’s deployment of new nuclear weapons systems that are illegal under the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty.

Better coordinate and share intelligence: Prevention of attacks on the Alliance’s civilian population would be best facilitated by an effective intelligence-led defence.  Efforts are underway within NATO to improve such co-operation but if such intelligence is to be properly actionable the Alliance needs to become far more effective at gathering, collating and distributing intelligence.

Re-establish effective consequence management: Most NATO allies have lost the ability to quickly identify and thus respond quickly to biological and chemical attack on either military or civilian targets.  In close conjunction with the allies, NATO must move to close that gap in its defences. One idea could be to create bespoke quick response teams of experts that could support national authorities in the wake of a biological or chemical weapons attack.

Instigate a strategic review of Alliance defence and deterrence: A vital question NATO needs to answer is this: in the face of a new concept of coercion how can the Alliance’s citizen be defended against an adversarial strategy that combines disruption, destabilisation, and destruction? Such a review would consider the implications of such an attack across the new spectrum of warfare that Moscow is purposefully engineering and which extends to and weaponises information, cyber, biology, chemistry, space, as well as the eventual or parallel use of conventional and nuclear forces.

Make the Alliance more resilient: The Alliance as a whole must now properly consider how to make critical structures and infrastructures upon which society depends to function far more resilient to an attack. The Salisbury attack might be small in scale but it implied the ease with which a perpetrator could inflict mass casualties on a NATO ally without the use of nuclear weapons.

Enhance NATO’s Enhance Forward Presence: The threat the Alliance is facing involves an adversary who is merging hybrid, cyber and hyper warfare into a new concept of warfare.  Therefore, it is impossible at this stage to know if the Salisbury attack was a one-off or part of some new form of conflict escalation.  It would thus be prudent to strengthen the military defences of the most vulnerable allies Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Accelerate NATO force mobility: NATO is already considering how to better facilitate its ability to move forces across the Alliance in an emergency and how best to reinforce its forces in Europe from across the Atlantic. This attack underlines the importance of that work and the reform of the NATO Command Structure.

Close the NATO deterrence Gap: By deploying short and intermediate range nuclear systems in Europe Russia is both skilful and illegal.  The aim is exploiting a clear gap in Alliance deterrence between NATO’s conventional force and its strategic nuclear forces and thus enhance Moscow’s ability to intimidate allies in a crisis. As I written in these pages before, NATO must actively consider the role of new technologies in closing that deterrence gap using non-nuclear capabilities without joining Moscow in the destruction of treaty-based security.

Power Politics, Russia & Salisbury

When, and frankly from what I have been told it is a question of ‘when’, Russia is confirmed as the perpetrator of the Salisbury attack it will be but the latest of a now long-line of flagrant and blatant flouting of international regimes and law by the Kremlin. Let me be clear; I have a deep respect for Russia and I am firm in my belief there can be no security in Europe without Russia.  My desire is to seek an accommodation with Russia via dialogue to establish a new peaceful order in Europe with which Russia is comfortable and from which Russians benefit.

Russia is also a great power and must be respected as such. However, the attack on my country was an attack on other great power with an economy roughly twice the size of Russia’s.  If Russia really has abandoned a rules-based international order in favour of the anarchy that is geopolitics democracies likes Britain will respond. Like all democracies, there has been a time-lag in that response but when it comes Moscow will quickly discover that whilst Russia might be a great power it is no longer a superpower.  In any such struggle, Russia will lose unless the Kremlin is mad enough to even contemplate that it could win another European war.  

Therefore, whilst Britain and the NATO allies must follow due process, for such process is in effect what divides the Putin regime from its neighbours, and never stop seeking dialogue with Russia, the Kremlin must be under no doubt that the NATO allies accept that the Novichok attack on a quiet provincial English city was both an attack upon them all and an egregious act of aggression that must not and cannot go unpunished. If they do not such weakness would mark the beginning of the end of NATO…something the Kremlin no doubt will also have considered at some length.

Julian Lindley-French