Surviving in a post-Nato era

Donald Tusk says Nato is disintegrating. He's right. Where are the lifeboats?

Many thanks to all the people who have sent condolences on the death of my mother. There will be a Requiem Mass at St Mary’s Bourne St, London SW1, at 1130 on May 30th. Please let me know if you’d like to attend 

I’m working hard on the launch for the Baltic International Security Centre. We now have staff, programmes, money, political support and legal status. More details will follow, but we are hiring an operations director.

Anyone interested should send a cv and covering letter to opsdirector@securebaltics.org

Here are my two columns for this week.

A Post-Nato Manifesto

With the alliance’s car-crash Ankara summit looming, allies need a survival strategy

Nato’s survival, not just its summit in the Turkish capital on July 7-8, is at stake. Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, now speaks bluntly of the alliance’s “ongoing disintegration”. Capriciousness in the White House over troop deployments and readiness to fight expose Europe’s strategic nakedness. Does anyone really believe now that Donald Trump would go to war with Russia over for Europe’s security?

But Viktor Orbán’s departure casts another bleak light on Europe’s dithering. With Hungary’s veto gone, it is clearer that domestic political weaknesses in the big national governments (Britain, France, Germany) create corrosive caution and timidity. Nor are the institutions in better shape. Their decision-making was already too slow in peacetime. In current conditions it is suicidally sleepy.

Meanwhile the Kremlin clocks tick ever-faster. In its latest annual report, Dutch military intelligence reckons Russia could be ready for war with Nato (make that: “the remains of Nato”) within a year of a halt to fighting in Ukraine. A sub-threshold confrontation, aimed at busting Europe’s remaining unity and credibility, could come even sooner.

Recent days may feel like scenes in a disaster movie. But in the two months before Ankara we still have a chance to re-write the script. True, nothing now will be easy, cheap or safe. But we do have options. Given that no country can defend itself alone, the priority is to make new alliances: flexible, capable frameworks of threat-aware allies that are willing to take risks and make sacrifices for themselves and for others. The most promising group of like-minded states includes the Nordic five (Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Norway and Sweden) and the Baltic three (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania). Together with Britain and the Netherlands they are part of the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF).

The JEF is a largely notional military outfit, albeit with excellent PR. Supposedly, it exists to reinforce the frontline states with great rapidity in a crisis. Sceptics note that it’s not very “joint” (Britain is in charge, but limply). There have been no “expeditions” since Afghanistan. There’s little in the way of “force” (JEF has no assigned soldiers, naval vessels or warplanes). Apart from that, it is in great shape.

But the JEF is at least a start and it could do a lot more. It could co-ordinate responses to Russian sub-threshold attacks, for example, by publishing an annual report on them, with each country contributing a chapter. That would be easy for the Baltics, much harder for those like Britain, stymied by bureaucratic silos and official secrecy. It would set benchmarks and raise public awareness.

The JEF countries could create a defence bank. Something along those lines is already in the works, led by Britain with Dutch and Finnish participation. This would raise new money, off the governments’ balance sheets, and might even spend it better.

But JEF should be a core, not a club. The heavyweights, Poland and Germany, are essential for anything involving Baltic Sea regional security: “JEFPG”, perhaps. A semi-secret “JEF-Plus” includes Ireland and Canada. And I hear talk of JEF-Plus-Plus, with Ukraine. High time: Ukraine may need the Europeans’ money, but the rest of the continent needs Ukraine’s military strength, experience and resolve even more badly.

Time is short. The Nordic-Baltic eight (NB8) could make a start by formalising their own military cooperation with Ukraine: a more reliable and effective ally than some members of Nato. Volodymyr Zelensky’s presence at the NB8 Tallinn summiton June 9^th would be a good opportunity for a big-bang announcement on that. Other Nato countries may dislike it. But at least they will have something to discuss in Ankara.

This is a lightly adapted version of my Times column

We must talk about threats in order to contain them

Publish details of hostile states’ attacks — or foes will be emboldened

Speaking publicly about security goes against the grain, for politicians, spooks and business leaders alike. Why frighten the voters? Why give the other side any clues? Few chief executives want to admit their companies’ vulnerabilities: it is bad for business and for the share price.

Such thinking, notably in the countries of the “Old West” such as Britain, contributes to a conspiracy of complacency about the threats we face, still below the threshold of all-out war, from Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. Sabotage is written off as accident (“electrical fires” seem alarmingly frequent in some of our key defence installations). Thuggery — fire bombings, beatings, sometimes murder — is dismissed as hooliganism or street crime.

Crippling cyber-attacks on big firms are treated as random acts of criminality, not state-sponsored economic warfare. Propaganda attacks are merely free speech. Dirty money skewing our political system is just donations by rich people. From influence peddling in universities to weaponised migration (a Russian favourite), our understanding is fragmented and incomplete.

The veil of ignorance makes us, the public, feel uneasy.