Europe Impecuniosis

Writing of Richard I and his campaign that would come to be known as the Third Crusade, ending as it did in a stalemate with limited concessions, one historian observed that, 'to be rex bellicosus one also had to be rex pecuniosus' - to be king of war, one also had to be king of money. 

Three centuries later, a cash-strapped Henry VIII would perform a diplomatic coup in 1520 during the three-week long lavish spectacle that woudl earn the sobriquet the Field of the Cloth of Gold (to the French under Francis I, this was Le Camp du Drap d'or). The French were trying to gain alliances against the Holy Roman Empire and hosted the English King at a site in Norther France outside of Calais. The two castles originally earmarked for the living quarters were in such disrepair that the Kings camped in the field, erecting grandiose tents of such colours that the countryside erupted in golden hues as the tents sprung up. 

Politically, the outcome of the meeting was neglible but such was the show of wealth and pomp by Henry that it reasserted England's place in the power politics of Europe and led to renewed interest in his favor from both France and the Empire. It had been a loss leader and triumph of diplomacy, a type of soft-power if you will, where England exercised her might on the field, rather than the battlefield. One can almost here the voice of Sun Tzu echo through the ages - if you are weak, appear strong.

The contrast between the two positions of the English kings and the outcomes is marked. In actually prosecuting an expensive foreign war, Richard I bankrupted the treasury and ended up imprisoned in Austria paying a ransom equivalent to twice the annual revenues of England, almost bankrupting the country as he had done in raising the revenues for conquest in the first place (In raising money for the campaign, Richard I persecuted rich Jews, sold royal lands and levied novel taxes. He declared that he 'would sell the city of London, if I could find a purchaser'). Kinetic operations don't lie - they require money and when the coffers are empty, the military operations must end. 

Henry VIII and the astute Cardinal Wolsey realised the coffers were empty but they expended a limited amount of money in a soft power offensive appearing strong and in the ensuing power struggle between France and the Empire, they positioned themselves in the middle and coveted as a strategic actor/ally by both parties. It was to gain England a valuable period of ascendency in European politics.

So the news that current UK operations in Operation Unified Protector have cost the British 'taxpayer' (I always really feel sorry for that person) £260 million in an ongoing campaign (over half of this earmarked for munitions replacements) at a time when the MOD is running at its most profligate, the SDSR has slashed military spending and the strategic objectives of the operation have apparently creeped silently into regime change (and what regimes will fill the voids is of course, unknown) has been greeted with obvious disgruntlement. Pro-government voices have cited this operation as an essential mission to head off catastrophe in the Maghreb before it gets out of control - spend half a billion now and you save billions in massive humanitarian disaster management, special forces and immigrant rehousing across Europe. Plus, implicitly, you get the good ratings of military leadership in a crisis. 

But in fact, whilst British and French leadership in the crisis was meant to demonstrate European ability to conduct a foreign campaign and show their relevance, the opposite has occurred. Von Moltke will be nodding in his grave, for the Prussian military theorist who wrote that 'no plan ever survives first contact with the enemy' would feel validated at the mixed messages and slow escalation of involvement in the Libyan affair. The presence of special forces on the ground would constitute an especially serious breech of initial pledges. Outgoing US Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, sceptical from the start about a no-fly zone, has now turned his ire to the sick man of NATO - Europe, in particular, implicitly, Britain and France. NATO had become, he said in a valedictory speech at Brussels, a 'two-tiered alliance' with members in Europe interested only in talking and peacekeeping.

This from the Guardian:

"The mightiest military alliance in history is only 11 weeks into an operation against a poorly armed regime in a sparsely populated country. Yet many allies are beginning to run short of munitions, requiring the US, once more, to make up the difference."

In March, all 28 Nato members had voted for the Libya mission, he said. "Less than half have participated, and fewer than a third have been willing to participate in the strike mission … Many of those allies sitting on the sidelines do so not because they do not want to participate, but simply because they can't. The military capabilities simply aren't there."

The air campaign had been designed to mount 300 sorties daily but was struggling to deliver 150, Gates added.

Europe plays the effeminate partner to a strong North American presence in NATO but the relationship, once amorous is now fraught with perils

The leader article in the current Foreign Affairs is thus instructive - Anders Fogh Rasmussen, sec-gen of NATO, writes about the problems facing the organization: 

'Since the end of the Cold War, defense spending by the European NATO countries has fallen by almost 20 percent. Over the same period, their combained GDP grew by around 55 percent. The picture is somewhat different in Asia. According to SIPRI, between 2000 and 2009, India's defense spending grew by 59 percent, and China's tripled. This lead to a double leap forward: a transformation of these countries' armed forces and their acquisition of new weapons systems.'

'If one compares Europe's defense spending with that of the United States, the contrast is also large. By the end of the Cold War, in 1991, defense expenditures in European countries represented almost 34 percent of NATO's total, with the United States and Canada covering the remaining 66 percent. Since then, the share of NATO's security burden shouldered by European countries has fallen to 21 percent.'

'Many observers, including some in government circles on both sides of the atlantic, argue that the biggest security challenge facing the West is rising debt levels in Europe and the United States. They have a fair point; after all, there can be no military might without money.'

But Rasmussen uses statistics here as a drunk uses a lampost - for support rather than illumination. Europe was busy reaping the post-cold war peace dividend and reorienting itself to an enlightened, humanitarian interventionist view of foreign policy. In the good years, America was happy to provide the umbrella. The collapse of bipolarity meant that Asian actors were forced to reasses their strategic interests and diplomatic ties, this led to increased defence budgets in the region. Nevertheless, the view of Europe from America as a dog with all bark and no bite seems credible as the Libya fiasco draws on.

So to sum up, to be nation-state bellicosus you also have to be nation-state pecuniosus. Well it's no wonder that Gates is bristling, after all, American finances are precarious and its main challenger to hegemonic status in the coming decades, China, holds approximately 120 trillion dollars worth of stake in the American economy including around $750 billion of its treasury bonds. When China sold up $34.2 billion of these in February, it prompted global concerns about the state of the American economy. With all that, United States and Canada shoulder some 75% of NATO defense expenditures in the current fiscal year. 

It seems ludicrous that Britain and France should be such poor cousins yet draw in their rich relatives to an offensive campaign that they cloaked in a humanitarian discourse. At the same time as drawing up the controversial SDSR they then start kinetic operations against a terrorist freedom fighter who has remained as leader of a large country on the doorstep of Southern Europe for 42 years. He hasn't given up without a fight? Incroyable! I smile, ironically, when Rasmussen asserts in a media interview that economic and military pressures will soon cause the downfall of the Qaddafi (in arabic, "he who throws") regime. He's probably right - I can't see how Qaddafi can withstand this siege indefinitely. But then I can't see how NATO can prosecute this campaign indefinitely. Clinton and his, "it's the economy, stupid" arrived at an overarching rule. Meanwhile, every aerial sortie plunges Europe further into the red.

We can't have our cake and eat it. If we want to prosecute wars in Afghanistan and Libya (Alfred von Schlieffen would turn in his grave at enmeshed prosecution of campaigns on two fronts) we need to cough up and stay the distance, beefing up our military, not downsizing it. If we want to shore up finances by reducing the military (we could streamline and augment our special forces capability but a vast reduction in armament and personnel would similarly affect the economy adversely by reducing defence industry procurement and putting men and women of the armed forces into redunduncy with skills ill-equipped for the civilian sector) then we need to work on our diplomacy, not "bombing to win".

culture wars

"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamposts - for support rather than illumination"

--Andrew Lang

I was fascinated by the google books ngram viewer that Thomas Rid used on his last KingsofWar blog post and which, at base, scans electronically stored books from a developed database which has volumes from 1800-2008. Naturally, I had a little go on the site myself and generated this set of statistics.

Blue= culture + war; green = islam; red = orientalism; yellow = jihadism

The role that culture plays in military planning, in particular counterinsurgency, is the crux of my PhD thesis, the title being, "to what extent does Orientalism inform the War on Terror?" and it draws largely on the points made in Patrick Porter's insightful "Miltary Orientalism: Eastern War through Western Eyes" (2009, Hurst). The most interesting point to be made from the graph is that "Islam" reached a similar high after the 1979 Iranian revolution as it has done since 9.11. Jihadism has often been equated to nihilism and recent scholarship at CTC West Point by Lia, Lahoud et alia and also in Europe by scholars such as Alia Brahimi ("Crushed in the Shadows") suggest that while jihadism may be difficult to align with nihilism, in the words of Lahoud, jihad is performed for "jihad's sake", in other words, jihad is the end and also the means. Jihad has no voice in the Arab Spring, which seeks to negate Western influence over proxies and corruption.

On the BBC World Service today, a commentator observed that the "1.2 trillion dollars" America has spent prosecuting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is an amount equal to the amount it owes China in Federal bonds. If ever there was a "statistic" that favoured soft over hard power, that is perhaps it. In tracing the ascent of culture in the role of military planning, there is a seminal work by Ralph Peters in Spring 2000, written in Parameters. This influential 8 page mission statement is required reading for any student of military doctrine. Being written before 9.11 its theory is based around the Mogadishu and Balkans affairs, and Peters concerns himself primarily with cities (see also Porter's notes on megacities of the third world in his Military Orientalism) and I quote Peters in full here, as I think it foreshadows Iraq and Afghanistan and hence underlines his importance:

"From the military standpoint, multicultural cities can be easy to conquer--with the aid of oppressed minorities as a fifth column--but difficult to administer after peace has been established. If you have made allies of one group, they will expect to dominate after the victory or intervention. Western notions of equitable treatment and the rule of law strike the population as risible, if not as an outright betrayal. Peace can be imposed, but not even a generation of occupation will convince the opposing groups to behave "like us." In cultures where compromise is, literally, unthinkable, the peacekeeping adventure will see a constant jockeying for favor and usually a hardening of physical divisions between groups. The citizens of all factions will be looking beyond the presence of the peacekeepers to the renewed struggle, violent or otherwise, for hegemony. Often, the nominal government imposed by the occupier or peacekeeper will have less real power than ethnic leaders, militia commanders in mufti, religious leaders, or mafiosi. The primary interests of each faction will be to exploit the power of the constabulary force for partisan purposes, to exploit gaps in the force's knowledge of the local situation for advantage, to shield illicit activities from the force's awareness, to consolidate power within the group, and, finally, to corrupt key elements of the force to facilitate prohibited behaviors and to undermine competitors. The primary challenge for a Western military operating in a multicultural city is to get at the facts--and the facts never hold still."

Anthropological notions have become ascendent in recent years as has been well documented, but mapping the "human terrain", whilst a project eagerly undertaken by the Pentagon, has proved illusive. MAP-HT and HST have come in for considerable criticism and from the post war planning of the Bonn conference, 2001 in Afghanistan, we now have the talks with the same Taliban that were defeated a decade ago. "War is hell," and hubris and anger necessitated our instigation of "culture wars" on "the edge of empire". We strove to become children of Huntington and Lewis, viewing the world as a clash of civilizations when in reality, prudent observations show that material interests predominate over cultural or even religious consderations. We wanted 9.11 to show us that the world was about a backward Islam trying to thwart an enlightened, modern West. In reality, it was the tiny minority instigatiing mass murder, unpresentative of any body of any population  

Spearfishing at the IMF

The recent announcement that the IMF had been the subject of a significant intrusion was the latest in a long line of high profile cyber attacks on prominent targets. Little has been released by the IMF (the IMF maintains sensitive financial data on nations) on this incident, but it is believed that one computer was compromised by a method known as spearfishing, which attaches a file that when executed, allows remote access to that system. 

Spearfishing was a name coined by the FBI and has been much in evidence in recent years. For a detailed breakdown on the recent attack on RSA security solutions, see here. For continued attacks on US government systems, see here. Although citing responsibility has been almost silent, China has come in for some criticism. As a state, they are perhaps world leaders in cyber-compromisation activities.

Also: For conspiracy theorists, this piece on the real reason for the jailing of Dominique Strauss-Kahn is interesting.

Headline of the day must go to the BBC World Service that started a piece on the now infamous Syrian lesbian lady's blog with the words, 'Gay Syrian in Damascus is American Man in Edinburgh'.