This week saw a big change for Europe, Nato and UK security. It was agreed that Iran was not a mainstream Nato and Europe pre-occupation. Donald Trump has sucked the oxygen out of the headlines at the Nato summit in Holland by being referred to as the “big Daddy” – not to his evident displeasure – by the unusually oleaginous secretary general Mark Rutte.
Both men got what they wanted. Trump got the European allies to pledge more money for their own defence – though notions that they would pony up 5% of their various GDPs are the stuff of fairy tales.
Rutte persuaded “big daddy” Donald to keep America interested in running the alliance and providing the overall guarantee of the US strategic umbrella, intelligence and surveillance and the complex management of a large military structure. This is something the EU bosses, in their more sober moments at least, know they cannot match or emulate.
Apart from the big daddy chatter, the media got hung up on the rhetorical barbed wire of America’s interpretation of the Article 5 treaty obligation of an attack on one ally meaning a response from all. Trump doctrine seems to be saying “not necessarily so,” and “it depends what you mean by.” Article 5 in the Nato treaty does not mean an automatic response. It generates a request and requirement from the ally being attacked. The reaction depends on the degree, circumstance and severity of the attack. If Russia attacked a Norwegian Navy tug, for example, would it call for a thermo-nuclear response ?
But the serious threat business was handled almost offstage. First there is the ramping up of aggressive rhetoric from Vladimir Putin as he struggles to make Russia’s ongoing summer offensive look decisive. This has brought a change in relations between Trump and Zelensky – the latter no longer the unwanted White House guest but someone in serious talks about getting more support including orders for Patriot missile batteries.
Putin is talking big about widening the war, of getting Belarus involved even more and that all the forces in his Central States Organisation – CSTO – come under Kremlin command. Meanwhile the economy is stalling, and allies like Iran are abandoned. Time is running out for this Kremlin team on the battlefield – and this makes them more dangerous.
This has brought a new realism and focus in British defence and security policy. This week we had the National Security Strategy, an exemplary document from Professor John Bew. Sharp in focus, elegant and brief, it spells out precisely the threats now operating on and in Britain, what needs to be done by our own forces and resources, and with ours allies to safeguard all our interests. It says what needs to be done now, immediately, and in the medium term.
China was the subject of one of the most intriguing statements on security this week
The arguments about what per centage of GDP should be spent and by when read a bit like obscure disputes in Old Russian Church theology. It is what needs to be spent in the next two years that should be the main focus in policy – with the growing malign activity of cyber from a cluster of nations and their organised crime pals and proxies. We must be aware of what is coming in cyber, space and exotic weaponry – from China especially.
China was the subject of one of the most intriguing statements on security this week, from Foreign Secretary David Lammy to the Commons last Tuesday about the China Audit. The China Audit , the assessment of China’s posture, potential and threat in the coming decade, was supposed to be published alongside the National Security Strategy. Foreign Sec Lammy explained with almost disarming candour why it couldn’t be published in full. It was too sensitive, and maybe some of the assessment too scary.
“Most of the detail is not disclosable without damaging our national interests,” he confessed. I suspect the detail covered cyber space, the militarisation of space, naval ambition and aggression, hyper sonic missiles, encryption and quantum computing. On the latter three items, China is now thought to be far and away world leader.
“Not engaging with China is, therefore, no choice at all. Chinese power is an escapable fact,” he told the Commons. This endorsed the view of the latest defence and security reviews of China as a “sophisticated and persistent challenge,” as well as being a potential partner for UK economic growth.
Curiouser and curiouser as Alice might have said about such statements. On the other hand they are indications of some serious and realistic strategic thought beginning to bloom in Whitehall and at Westminster.
Robert Fox is defence editor
