Category Archives: European Union

Britain, Defence, Economic, European Union, Government, Military, Politics

Labour’s defence spending. A ruse

UK DEFENCE SPENDING

Intro: Ministers are resorting to desperate measures to boost Britain’s military budget

“We cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget … We are under prepared. We are under insured. We are under attack. We are not safe … Britain’s national security and safety is in peril.”

If these words had been said by James Cartlidge, Britain’s almost invisible shadow defence secretary, no one would have batted an eyelid. This sort of rhetoric is what Opposition politicians are supposed to say, whether justified or not.

But when it’s said by no less a Labour stalwart than Lord George Robertson – a former secretary general of NATO and the principal author of the Government’s recent Strategic Defence Review – it really is time for everyone to sit up and take notice.

Robertson is blunt and direct in his language when he says policy was being determined by the “corrosive complacency” of non-military experts in the Treasury. This has led to repeated delays to the 10-year investment plan caused by arguments over how to fund it.

It is of course a core part of the Treasury’s function to say no to the constant stream of departmental demands for more money. Someone has to keep the lid on burgeoning government spending and it falls to the Treasury to perform that role.

It should be said that this would be an understandable, even an admirable, characteristic if it were applied across the board to all forms of public spending.

What so infuriates military chiefs, however, is the double standards the Treasury seems to apply, not to mention the vast gap that separates the political dogma from reality. There could scarcely be a more vital government function than defence of the realm, for everything depends upon it from national to an individual person’s basic security; yet ministers pay lip service to its importance.

At the same time, too, they’ve squeezed defence spending to virtual oblivion. The proportion of national income devoted to welfare and public sector pay, coincidentally, has run out of control.

This didn’t happen by accident. It was done deliberately from the end of the cold war onwards. The resources once thought necessary for defence were instead diverted into social and health spending – a so-called peace dividend that allowed for a massive expansion of the welfare state.

Defence spending has meanwhile shrunk from about 5pc of GDP at the time of the Falklands war in the early 1980s to just 2.3pc last year.

Only belatedly have ministers realised their peril. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was warning enough. US threats to withdraw from NATO provided another wake-up call. Then came the national humiliation of being unable to field a single frigate to defend British interests in the latest outbreak of hostilities in the Middle East.

There seems to be plenty of money that can be found when it comes to inflation-busting increases in public sector pay, yet ministers struggle to find the resources needed to sustain an operational navy. Somewhere along the line, the Government lost its sense of priority.

While welfare spending, taxes, and borrowing mushroom, there are still no answers as to how to deliver even the relatively unambitious targets the Government has set for defence – 3pc of GDP by the end of the parliament and 3.5pc by 2035.

TWO

In acts of desperation, ministers are reaching for what they amusingly call “creative solutions”, apparently unaware of the unfortunate connotations the expression carries in accountancy circles – as in “creative accounting”.

If increased defence spending can somehow be kept off the public balance sheet, then miraculously it immediately becomes perfectly “affordable”.

In pursuit of such sleight of hand, the UK is exploring setting up a new mechanism for collectively funding defence spending with the Netherlands and Finland. There is also the possibility of Poland and other NATO allies joining in.

The attraction of the scheme is that under international accountancy conventions, the additional spending moves “off balance sheet” if the entity pursuing it is multinational. Typically, a minimum of three countries is required to satisfy these requirements.

It’s cajolery and a swindle, because whichever way you cut it, and however the entity is funded, ultimately it’s the customer that pays, and the customers here are the three countries involved. Eventually, the costs will bounce back on to the British taxpayer.

Still, if it helps support the additional spending the military so desperately needs, it would perhaps be perverse to knock it. But it is also just an accounting ruse that allows the Government to spend money that it doesn’t have. Markets are sensing hidden deception and that something is wrong, and rightly so.

As is apparent from International Monetary Fund (IMF) analysis just published, Britain is in a dire fiscal hole, with fast rising taxes and borrowing struggling to keep up with increased welfare and other forms of government spending.

The peace dividend is gone, so the Government is desperately searching for ways of cooking the books in the hope that nobody notices. In practice, few are going to be fooled by this kind of window dressing.

Already, there are hundreds of billions of pounds worth of government liabilities conveniently shunted into the shadows of off-balance sheet finance, including the costs associated with previous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This would further add to them.

How Britain is going to pay for increased defence spending is anyone’s guess. Even the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, said that the Government was still trying to figure out how to do it in conjunction with European partners. Many will be sensing what he meant is the charade of international defence procurement and financing.

Seeking solutions in Europe is becoming a bit of a thing with this Government. Getting closer to the EU is also proposed as a solution for the country’s lack of growth, even if it is hard to see how a little “dynamic alignment” in standards is going to make much of a difference. But this halfway house doesn’t get the Prime Minister or the country anywhere. It is certainly not going to get the UK out of the fiscal hole it has dug for itself.

In terms of the public finances, Britain is on the ropes. It is also widely considered to be acutely vulnerable to the current energy price shock. The IMF expects UK growth this year to be slower and inflation higher than any other major advanced economy.

Worse still, the tax burden is projected to rise by more than anywhere else in the world during the remainder of this parliament, and that’s on the basis of what we already know about the Government’s plans. It is eminently possible to imagine further shock announcements to come. And yet public debt is still expected to swell to more than 100pc of GDP by 2029.

A rational person would have thought that somewhere in this developing financial Armageddon, the money might have been found to at least keep the military operational.

But no, social spending priorities continue to eclipse all else.

Resorting to accounting tricks only makes matters worse.

Standard
Denmark, Europe, European Union, Government, Greenland, NATO, Politics, Society, United States

The reasons behind Trump’s desire to acquire Greenland

UNITED STATES – GREENLAND

It is said that Donald Trump’s much-vaunted desire to acquire Greenland is all about US national security.

First, the US president claimed the Arctic island, a self-governing territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, was being swarmed by Russian and Chinese vessels. Then he said ownership of the sprawling territory was vital for his planned “Golden Dome” missile defence shield.

There are hints of truth in both claims, but security experts have broadly argued that a US acquisition of Greenland is not necessary to address the national security concerns.

The sparsely populated island plays an outsized role in the United States’ and NATO’s wider air defence architecture. It sits smack bang in the middle of the shortest flight path between Moscow and Washington – known as the great-circle distance.

Technically, the island is 2,000 miles from Washington and 2,000 miles from Moscow.

Since the end of the Second World War, the US has had military personnel stationed at Pituffik Space Base, on the far north coast of Greenland. It serves as the US military’s northernmost base, about 900 miles from the North Pole and is home to about 150 troops. It is a key cog in Washington’s early warning system for missiles. If Russia or China were to fire a ballistic missile at the US, its path would probably cross directly over Greenland, which is why the primary role of the personnel at Pituffik is to scan the skies for incoming aerial threats.

However, America’s military footprint on Greenland has significantly dwindled since the end of the Cold War.

At its peak, Washington had 17 installations and 15,000 soldiers on the island, hunting for Soviet submarines and ships, as well as being ready for a feared invasion.

This was underpinned by a 1951 agreement signed between the US and Danish governments. Copenhagen has repeatedly argued this deal still stands, and there is nothing preventing Mr Trump from deploying more soldiers to Greenland without the need to acquire the island.

This includes hosting any assets that would contribute to the US’s Golden Dome project – a $175bn (£131bn) air defence system that would mimic Israel’s Iron Dome, but on a vastly larger scale. Mr Trump had not mentioned Greenland, however, as being vital to this decade-long project until just recently – suggesting it has become a convenient excuse for the White House to use.

The Golden Dome project, it has been claimed, would also involve a system of satellites – some that track missiles and others that fire their own projectiles to shoot them down.

While analysts have questioned whether such technology even exists, or is likely to exist any time soon, US ownership of Greenland would not be a prerequisite for an American satellite defence system.

In real terms, Pituffik’s importance is expected to grow as climate change reshapes the polar Arctic by opening up new trade routes close to North America.

Greenland sits where the Arctic Ocean meets the Atlantic.

Russian ships and submarines leaving the country’s Arctic region bases to head south have to pass nearby to do so. One of the main routes sees the Russian vessels pass through the waters between Greenland, Iceland, and the UK – known as the GIUK Gap.

A second gap, the Bear Gap, between Norway and Iceland has also emerged as a favoured option.

Since Vladimir Putin ordered his invasion of Ukraine, NATO has increased its aerial and naval patrols in the area. Denmark says it will invest £1.73bn to bolster its Arctic Command with new ships, drones, and surveillance aircraft to guard the region. The spending was announced in January last year to deter Mr Trump’s interest in Greenland.

Again, as with missile defence, bolstering security in the waters around Greenland does not require acquisition of the island.

Denmark insists Washington could use existing treaties to address those national security concerns.

Greenland’s geography might provide the easiest route to explaining Mr Trump’s desire to acquire the territory. The island’s capital is closer to Washington than it is Copenhagen.

But it could be down to the maps drawn by Gerardus Mercator in the 16th century, and still commonly used.

On the Mercator Map, areas near the poles are greatly exaggerated in size.

Greenland can appear to be the same size of Africa, despite being 14-times smaller. South America also appears smaller than the Arctic island.

Mr Trump has publicly spoken of his love of maps, and for the size of perceived regional superpowers, such as the US or Russia. To some, the Mercator Distortion could just make a combined US-Greenland landmass look bigger than Russia.

Standard
Denmark, Europe, European Union, Government, Greenland, History, National Security, NATO, Politics, United States

Solutions emerge that could solve the Greenland crisis

GREENLAND

Intro: Turning disused military facilities on Greenland into “sovereign” US bases would hand Donald Trump a territorial prize without him launching a full-scale invasion

High above the Arctic Circle, surrounded by Greenland’s frozen wastes, American scientists conducting a secret research project hit upon a brilliant and remarkable idea.

Suppose nuclear missiles could be hidden inside the polar ice cap? These instruments of Armageddon might be able to survive a Soviet strike and then wreak terrible revenge. Alas, the US military had to abandon this dream after finding that constantly shifting ice fields were never going to provide safe shelter for missile silos.

But the location of this scheme in the 1960s – a once-secret “city under the ice” known as Camp Century – may hold the key to resolving a diplomatic impasse that European governments never believed they would have to contend with. Namely, the prospect of America seizing Greenland from Denmark.

Just days ago, President Trump said: “If we don’t take Greenland, Russia or China will – and I’m not letting that happen… one way or the other, we’re going to have Greenland.”

The dawning realisation that he is deadly serious has triggered a scramble for solutions, intended to avoid the catastrophe of America using force against an ally.

“If the United States chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops, including our NATO agreement – and thus the security that has been provided since the end of the Second World War,” said Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister. The clock on defusing the crisis is ticking.

US vice-president JD Vance and secretary of state Marco Rubio met with the Danish and Greenlandic foreign ministers in the White House, but President Trump again warned that anything less than American control of Greenland was “unacceptable”.

France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, has said that France would open a consulate in Greenland on February 6, acting on a decision taken last year during President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to the territory.

Plans are also being laid for a new NATO mission to secure Greenland, which will probably involve UK forces. Yet, if that idea is not enough to satisfy Trump, the solution could lie on a small island 4,000 miles away.

Cyprus has hosted British bases throughout its 65-year history as an independent state. Today, RAF Akrotiri on its southern coast serves as Britain’s busiest overseas base, while GCHQ has a vital listening post in the eastern Dhekelia area. What makes these facilities different is that both are located on British sovereign territory. The Union flag flies over Akrotiri and Dhekelia, whose 98 square miles – or 3 per cent of the island of Cyprus – are, legally speaking, just as British as any other town or county in the UK.

Suppose America’s military installations in Greenland were to be converted into “sovereign base areas” on the Cyprus model. Given that this arrangement has worked for nearly seven decades on a small and crowded Mediterranean island, it should be relatively simple to replicate on a vast and largely empty territory like Greenland. Could this be the answer?

Michael Clarke, a visiting professor at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, says it might be a way of giving Trump the sort of victory that he wants, and so it has plausibility.

Any possible solution has to deal with the fact that Trump’s public reasons for taking Greenland make no objective sense: “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security,” he says, apparently unaware that America already has an agreement with Denmark signed in 1951, allowing the US to “construct, install, maintain and operate” any military base on Greenland and to “station and house personnel”.

The US military also enjoys free access to the seas around the island. If Trump is right to claim that Russian and Chinese ships are now prowling these waters, then America can already counter this threat. There is simply no need for Trump to “have” Greenland.

During the Cold War, the US used its rights under the 1951 accord to build at least 17 installations across the island, ranging from airfields to radar stations and weather observatories.

In the high north, more than 1,000 miles from Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, American engineers tunnelled into a glacier to create Camp Century in 1960. Powered by a nuclear reactor, this secret maze of living quarters and research facilities – codenamed “Project Iceworm” – housed 200 specialists studying the possibility of hiding missile silos beneath the snow. When that proved impossible, Camp Century was shut in 1967. Later, as the Cold War came to an end, America dismantled all but one of its military installations in Greenland, withdrawing virtually all of its 6,000 personnel.

Today, the only remaining US facility is Pituffik Space Base on the shores of Baffin Bay, 138 miles west of the carcass of Camp Century. It is here where about 200 personnel watch for incoming ballistic missiles as part of the US Early Warning System. If Pituffik were to become US sovereign territory, then Trump would be able to say that he had planted the Stars and Stripes in the snow and gained new land for the United States. If the same status were to be accorded to the abandoned tunnels and unusable silos of Camp Century – and perhaps the locations of all the other former military sites – then 17 US flags might appear on the map, and a few hundred square miles of Arctic ice cap be added to America. Given that Greenland covers more than 836,000 square miles and has only 56,000 people, this would make little practical difference. No-one’s life would be changed if the Stars and Stripes were to fly over some uninhabited inlets far above the Arctic Circle. Even if the boundaries of any sovereign base areas were to be drawn as expansively as possible, and Trump gained a few thousand square miles, that would only amount to a fraction of Greenland.

“The real issue is that Trump wants to add a big chunk of territory to the United States so that he gets his face on Mount Rushmore,” says Prof Clarke. “He’s not going to get the Nobel Peace Prize, so he wants another sort of prize.”

About 40 per cent of the current territory of the United States was bought, with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and the Alaska Purchase of 1867 being the most famous examples, and Trump seemingly yearns for something comparable. Granting America sovereign base areas in Greenland may be a way of handing him the prize that he craves – without, in practice, changing very much.

The International Security Programme at the Chatham House think tank certainly agrees that this could be a solution, while adding that any territorial concessions made under US pressure would be a bitter pill for Denmark and Greenland.

Chatham House believes that although this would still be a big concession for Denmark and Greenland to make, it would be a better concession than risking an American attack. It stresses, that for Denmark and Greenland, this is now such a matter of national security that they probably could make far-reaching concessions in bringing this impasse to an end.

There must be a danger that Trump may act unilaterally and simply declare US sovereignty over Pituffik, and perhaps the chain of defunct installations, including Camp Century.

Denmark’s best option could be to pre-empt him by offering to convert these facilities into sovereign base areas as part of an overall settlement.

Some possibilities are infinitely worse. Rubio has said that America wants to buy the entirety of Greenland, reviving Trump’s proposal from his first presidential term. But the Danish government has neither the legal power nor the appetite to sell its territory.

If no solution is possible, Denmark could stand firm and rally its European allies, hoping that Trump’s attention may turn elsewhere. But that option increases the risk of America resorting to military action – and just about anything would be better than that calamity.

Yet, even if the confrontation could be resolved by giving the US sovereign base areas, Prof Clarke believes this outcome would still weaken the West. “NATO will have suffered because of that – the fact that they’ve had to buy him off. And Denmark will have suffered. So NATO would still come out of this weaker,” he said. “But it would not be as destructive as the possible alternative.”

Standard