Category Archives: NATO

Britain, Europe, Foreign Affairs, Government, NATO, Politics, Society, United States

Britain’s shrinking influence on the global stage…

BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY

SOME two decades ago the British foreign secretary, Douglas Herd, decreed that Britain should aim to ‘punch above its weight in the world’. Today the country seems hesitant, reluctant even, to enter the ring. Some, such as a recently retired British NATO chief, have even complained that the prime minister, David Cameron, has become a ‘foreign-policy irrelevance’. America continues to despair of Britain’s shrinking armed forces and has openly criticised Britain’s ‘constant accommodation’ of China. Allies are worried, and so they should be given world events as they are. For example, consider Britain’s non-adoptive approach over events between Russia and Ukraine.

Yet, despite the world’s tensions, the country’s politicians, who are fighting to win a general election on May 7th, appear unbothered by those expressing concern. That is a mistake. Britain’s diminishing global clout and influence has become a big problem, both for the country and the world.

A powerful force in relative decline, Britain’s propensity is to veer between hubristic intervention abroad and anxious introspection at home. Following Tony Blair’s expeditionary misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, conflicts which cost us heavily, Britain’s coalition government was always going to shun grand schemes. Now, it would seem, is that our ruling politicians are not so much cautious, but apathetic, ineffective and fickle.

The prime minister did make a brave and passionate case for armed intervention and assistance in toppling the Libyan regime of Muammar Qaddafi. But like so many other examples concerning foreign intervention he did not reckon for the day after and Libya is now in a state of internecine civil war. He led America to believe that Britain would support it in bombing raids over Syria, only to find that his parliamentary vote was bungled by strong political opposition. Britain may have been one of the moving forces behind the workings of the 1994 Budapest memorandum, which ostensibly guaranteed Ukraine’s security when it gave up its Soviet-era nuclear weapons, but the prime minister has been almost absent in dealing with Russian revanchist aggression against it. Last year, too, as host of a NATO summit in Wales, David Cameron urged the alliance’s members to pledge at least 2% of their GDP to defence. Just months later, a fiscally straightened Britain intent on deficit reduction at all costs looks poised even to break its own rule.

David Cameron’s pledge of an in-out referendum on Europe if he wins the election has given the impression of Britain being semi-detached. Rather than counteracting that position through vigorous diplomacy, the prime minister has reinforced it. In European Union summits, for instance, he has often been underprepared and zealously overambitious. His rather humiliating and embarrassing attempt to block Jean-Claude Juncker from becoming EU president of the Commission left him with only Hungary for company as a dissenting voice. Mr Cameron’s insistence of pulling the Conservatives out of the EU’s main centre-right political group has had the unintended effect of cutting Britain out of vital discussions with other centre-right leaders, such as Angela Merkel of Germany.

And what of Labour? Ed Miliband, the party’s leader, may well be pro-European, but he has no more connection of American foreign policy than Mr Cameron does. He apologises for Labour’s interventionist history so strenuously and unreservedly that he leaves little or no room for liberal intervention. And, of course, differing arguments abound from all political parties over the submarine-based nuclear-missile system that is seen by the Conservative Party as a pillar of Britain’s relations with America and NATO – an argument that swings to total rejection when it comes to the Scottish Nationalist Party, a position which rankles right-wing politicians as the SNP could end up propping-up a potential Labour minority government through confidence and supply motions.

Those who defend the prime minister say that Britons are war weary and impoverished. What do they say, then, of Mrs Merkel and François Hollande, the French president, who have shown that you can have an active foreign policy while dealing with an economic crisis?

Liberal values and promoting international co-operation require defending, especially so just now. New emerging powers, particularly China, want a far bigger say in how the world works. By seizing Crimea at will, and invading Ukraine, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has challenged norms of behaviour that were established after the Versailles Treaty and Second World War. If Britain now refuses to stand up for its values, it will inherit and become part of a world that will be less to its liking.

Britain is still well placed to make a difference. With a great diplomatic tradition, a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and reasonably strong ties to Europe and America, Britain ought to be pushing hard to extend open trade, human rights and international law as well as providing impetus towards new agendas against crime, terrorism and climate change.

If Britain is to make its voice heard, it needs to bulk up its diplomacy and armed forces. Pledging to spend 2% of GDP on defence may seem arbitrary but it is a crucial sign to America and other countries that Britain is prepared to pull its weight in exchange for NATO’s guarantee of joint security. This should make more sense than the obscure commitment to spend a lavish amount of 0.7% of GDP on foreign aid.

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Asia, China, Economic, Europe, Government, Intelligence, Middle East, Military, National Security, NATO, Society, United States

US Defence Strategy…

(From the archives) Originally posted on January 7, 2012 by markdowe

SHIFT IN AMERICA’S DEFENCE STRATEGY

On Saturday, 07 January, 2012, the Editorial of the Daily Telegraph focused on America’s shift in defence strategy, following Thursday’s announcement by President Barack Obama. The US is to focus less on Europe and more on Asia following the rising threat of China.

The Editorial states:

‘The Pentagon briefing room rarely hosts all of America’s service chiefs, let alone the president. Its use by Barack Obama to announce the conclusions of his defence review was designed to add a sense of drama – and the occasion certainly lived up to its billing. Future historians will probably conclude that this was the week when America’s entire foreign and defence strategy pivoted decisively away from Europe and towards the Pacific. More ominously, it might also mark the onset of a new, if concealed, arms race between the US and its aspiring rival, China.

First things first: America’s military dominance will remain unchallenged for the foreseeable future. Mr Obama might have announced spending cuts of almost $500 billion over the next decade, but this amounts to a light trim for a defence machine with an annual budget of $650 billion, amounting to 45 per cent of all military expenditure in the world. America is not axing capabilities in the foolish fashion of British governments; rather, its power is being focused on the great strategic challenges of the next century. These can be simply summarised: the struggle for mastery in Asia, home of the world’s most populous countries and fastest-growing economies, and responding to sudden crises. To this end, the US will reduce its presence in Europe, cut 90,000 soldiers and bulk up in the Pacific, with new bases in Australia and elsewhere. As for other flashpoints, few will be surprised that the US policy stresses the goals of containing Iran and guaranteeing free passage through the Strait of Hormuz.

On a purely military level, two points stand out. The US might be cutting its army, but it has ruled out reducing its fleet of 11 aircraft carriers, each of which packs more punch than the entire air forces of most countries. While China’s defence budget has recorded double-digit increases for the past decade, it has still launched only one carrier – an old Russian model of doubtful combat value. Second, Mr Obama stressed his determination to invest in “intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance”. Put simply, the US will seek to extend its lead in the most advanced combat systems: where scores of troops – and hundreds of support staff – might once have been required to dispatch a senior al-Qaeda operative, now one unmanned drone can do the job.

America’s new course could well be shifted by a strategic shock akin to the September 11 attacks. Nevertheless, this plan will have momentous consequences for Europe and Asia alike. For decades, the US has underwritten the security of the Atlantic as well as the Pacific, effectively allowing Europe a free ride and permitting a string of Nato members the luxury of running down their defence budgets. This era is rapidly coming to a close. Yet with a few honourable exceptions, such as Britain and France, European powers have failed to fund their armed forces adequately, or deploy them when needed. Germany, in particular, must overcome the burden of its history and face up to the responsibilities that go with being the Continent’s leading economic power.

Mr Obama’s address studiously refrained from mentioning China, the country that probably has most at stake. Beijing’s leaders will now have to make far-reaching choices of their own. As events in Burma have shown, China’s “peaceful rise” has alarmed many of its neighbours: for most countries in the region, American power and values remain far more appealing. Moreover, China has grown rich largely thanks to trade, not least with the US. Faced with the net of containment that America is quietly laying across the Pacific, China will search for the Achilles’ heel of the US Navy, perfecting a new generation of missiles capable of destroying aircraft carriers from hundreds of miles away, working out how to cripple the internet, and how to blind the US satellite network, on which all its military assets now depend.

The world will pay a bitter price, however, if this veiled arms race between America and China escalates. History shows that free trade and military rivalry – however disguised – make for uncomfortable bedfellows. Beijing has gained rapidly in both wealth and power. The manner in which it chooses to pursue them now will have consequences for us all.’ [sic]

 

MD responded:

Whilst the US has declared China as a threat and announcing Asia as a priority, America is also to invest in a long-term strategic partnership with India. India will become the new powerful Asian ally of the United States in the region. In rolling out its new strategy, the Pentagon has made clear that the fronts for potential conflicts are shifting towards China. The US says that all of the trends – whether that is demographic, geopolitical, economic or military – are shifting towards the Pacific and, that over the long-term, China’s emergence as a regional power will have the potential to affect the US economy and security in a variety of ways.

It shouldn’t be in any doubt that China has unsettled its neighbours over several years with the expansion of its navy and improvements in missile and surveillance capabilities. The Pentagon is anxious about China’s strategic goals as it begins to search for a new generation of weapons.

The US defence strategy followed a major diplomatic push by Washington to expand security partnerships with its allies in the region. Last month, the US, India and Japan held their first trilateral meeting in an attempt to counter China’s rising influence in the Asia-Pacific.

China has advanced its influence in the region, along with allies like North Korea, Pakistan, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Over recent years it has established itself as a growing, and sometimes bullying power in the Pacific, particularly in East Asia. Most of the countries, though, in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have festering territorial disputes with China. America’s new emphasis on Asia and the containment of China also stems from the fact that the Asia-Pacific region now constitutes the centre of gravity of world economic activity.

But is America’s new stance the beginning of something that could fan Cold war-style antagonism?

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Britain, Iraq, Islamic State, NATO, Syria, Turkey, United States

Turkey: why isn’t it doing anything to curb the advances of Islamic State?

THE LACK OF TURKISH ACTION

Almost 200,000 people have been forced to flee and abandon their homes, joining 1.5 million Syrian refugees already in Turkey.

Poorly equipped Kurdish fighters – men, women and children – have tried in vain with AK-47 assault rifles to hold back the maniacal hordes of Islamic State fighters. The terrorists are armed with modern, heavy-grade American weapons.

IS now has a clear grip on at least a third of the Syrian Kurdish stronghold of Kobani on the border with Turkey.

U.S. and Arab warplanes and drones have been targeting IS positions, but to little avail. U.S. General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, accepts the town could fall, leaving its remaining citizens facing rape, murder and torture at the hands of the barbarians besieging it.

All the while, just a few hundred yards over the border, Turkish troops look on. As IS fighters stalk the deserted streets of the town, Turkish tanks in clear sight of the calamity stand idle.

Turkey’s inaction as Kobani falls has provoked worldwide fury. Kurdish expats have taken to the streets throughout the country, and at least 19 people are known to have died in violent clashes against the government’s troops and police.

Washington has ‘voiced concern’ about Turkey’s reluctance to engage IS, even though it has its own parliament’s approval to do so.

Less diplomatically, a U.S. State Department official reportedly told the New York Times: ‘This isn’t how a NATO ally acts while hell is unfolding a stone’s throw from its border.’

It does, indeed, seem outrageous that Turkey, the second-largest land power in NATO with 290,000 troops, and a candidate for EU membership, is doing nothing to prevent a massacre on its doorstep. Why does it view the prospect of IS’s dreaded black banner fluttering over a town near its border with such apparent equanimity?

The main reason – and it is a very simple one – is that Turkey abhors the 1.3million Syrian Kurds more than it hates IS.

Turkey is home to some 15million Kurds – about 20 per cent of its population – many of who are locked in a violent secessionist battle with the Turkish government.

What Turkey really fears is that the Syrian Kurds will establish their own state on the Turkey/Syria border, which could prove deeply destabilising in a country with such a large Kurdish population. Anything – even IS – that weakens the Syrian Kurds reduces that threat.

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Turkey has, for 30-years, fought a brutal war against the far-Left militant Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), until a fragile ceasefire was declared in 2013. In those blood-soaked decades, 40,000 people were killed in vicious fighting that involved suicide bombers on the terrorist PKK side, the flattening of Kurdish villages on the other – and widespread allegations of torture on both.

What makes Turkey particularly reluctant to defend the Syrian Kurds in Kobani is that they are allied to the PKK, and committed to Kurdish homeland. This explains why Turkish border guards have been stopping PKK militia and other Kurdish fighters from joining their Syrian kinsmen in Kobani to fight IS.

And why, in contrast, they turned a blind eye to foreign jihadis flying into Turkey to take the long bus journey over the border to Syria – not to mention the 3,000 Turks who have joined IS after being recruited in rundown provincial towns.

Turkey’s response to IS was certainly complicated by the terrorists’ seizure of 49 Turkish hostages in Syria. But rather than refuse to negotiate, the Turks exchanged them for 180 imprisoned IS sympathisers.

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has made it plain he sees no moral difference between the Kurds in Kobani and IS.

In a briefing, Mr Erdogan said: ‘It is wrong to view them differently; we need to deal with them jointly.’

One diplomat who is involved in attempting to build the anti-IS alliance says Erdogan hates the Syrian Kurds. What is more, the diplomat said, is that ‘he thinks they’re worse than IS.’

Elsewhere, the EU’s counter-terrorism co-ordinator, Gilles de Kerchove, said: ‘The Syrian Kurds are a big concern for Erdogan because he is not done with the PKK.’

Both the EU and the U.S. has designated the PKK as a terrorist organisation. The irony is that the West is now implicitly relying on PKK fighters to relieve Kobani. And the fact is that, until IS came along, the Syrian Kurds were getting ever closer to their dreams of an autonomous state.

In the chaos of the Syrian civil war, they had declared their own statelet, calling it ‘Rojava’, which straddled Syria’s northern border with Turkey like a series of cantons.

An embattled President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, locked in a lethal war with IS, tolerated this arrangement, which put Kobani right in the centre of the statelet. Little wonder IS considers the town to be of such strategic significance.

The Syrian Kurds have taken their lead from Kurds in northern Iraq, who have established their own thriving and virtually autonomous regime in an oil-rich region now known as Iraqi Kurdistan.

The difference, however, is that Turkey does not see the Iraqi Kurds – who will have nothing to do with the PKK – as a threat. Ankara invested heavily in the region and has become increasingly dependent on Kurdistan’s oil and gas to fuel its own growth.

In contrast, Turkey fears that any concession to the Syrian Kurds will fuel demands from its own restive Kurdish population for autonomy.

On top of all of this, you have the autocratic and self-determined nature of Erdogan who, in a move reminiscent of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, appointed himself president this summer after serving 12-years as prime minister.

No Turkish leader since the death in 1938 of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, has invested himself with such power as Erdogan. But whereas Ataturk wanted to distance Turkey from its religious heritage, turning it into a power player in modern Europe, Erdogan has very different ideas.

As part of his general conservative push, Erdogan has been trying to re-orientate the country away from the decadent West and towards the Arab world, which the Ottoman Turks ruled for centuries.

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With his ambition to revive Turkey’s once-great power status, Erdogan has allied the country not only with the conservative Sunni Muslims of Saudi Arabia, but with the Muslim Brotherhood regime of former President Morsi in Egypt, and with the Sunni militant Palestinian group Hamas.

In doing so, he destroyed Turkey’s good relations with Israel, a staunch ally of the Kurds.

Relations with the newly-elected military regime in Egypt are grim, too. Erdogan’s emotional pull towards Sunni Arabs means he is implacably opposed to Syria’s President Assad, who is an ally of Shia Iran, and explains why he is so keen to back Assad’s enemies, even if it means backing IS.

That is why he is telling the U.S. that only if America extends its intervention in Syria to toppling Assad will he then move to help the Kurds in Kobani.

Erdogan will drive a very hard bargain before he contemplates any military action, not least because the Turks realise that while Western intervention comes and goes in the Middle East, Turkish intervention in Syria could involve the country in an intractable war that lasts decades.

Yet, this is a NATO country which the West hopes will put men on the ground to repulse IS. Some hope that is. For as well as supporting the terrorists, Turkey has been allowing British jihadis to cross its borders, while simultaneously claiming its desire to join the anti-IS coalition.

At this terrifying moment and juncture when IS appears to be unstoppable, it’s tragic for the West that Turkey is the country that holds most of the cards.

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