Phony Baloney Power
?“Today, the UK is undoubtedly less politically and economically influential than in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. This trend is likely to continue given the simple arithmetic of demography and compound economic growth.”
The World in 2040: Renewing the UK’s Approach to International Affairs
Phony Baloney Power
April 22, 2024.?Britain is now in a pre-war situation London but cannot afford to prevent it.?On the one hand, Grant Shapps, the Secretary of State for Defence (Defence Minister), says the West is in a “pre-war” phase. On the other hand, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says defence expenditure will only be increased when Britain’s economic circumstances permit. Or, rather, London will only match threat to investment when economic circumstances permit.? Welcome to phony baloney power.?
Phony baloney power is talk big, do-little appeasement by a British Establishment that lives in an alternative power reality to much of the world.? Let me give you the prime example - Ukraine. Following last week's Iranian attack on Israel Rishi Sunak said that Britain will always stand in the path of aggression.? At the same time Sunak has given much of Britain’s fighting power to Ukraine, although not enough to ensure Ukrainians can successfully defend themselves. And, every weekend the Government watches on impotently as Central London is effectively surrendered to anti-Semitic and anti-Western hatred.
Perhaps the most egregious example of Britain's phony baloney power is British Foreign Secretary Lord David Cameron travelling the globe lecturing leaders who really understand power when he clearly does not.? For most leaders with any sense of history it must be galling to say the very least to smile politely to the man who did more than any other recent leader to reduce Britain (and its armed forces) to what it now is, whilst he warns them of the dangers of making the wrong decisions. Chutzpah or what? At least he has the experience.
Phony Baloney Globalisation
Britain and the other European phony baloney globalists have been caught out by hard on nationalists like Putin and Xi and now have really very little to deter them other than the hope the Americans will not vanish down the rabbit hole of their own domestic political nervous breakdown.? If Cameron needed any reminding that neither he nor his (my) country are as important as he seems to think then his recent failed visit to Washington should have been a painful reminder.? The message from the Americans was clear: you are a failed former prime minister in a failed government of a former great power that you did your utmost to weaken by imposing deep cuts on your armed forces right in the middle of a major campaign in Afghanistan.
This month, three grandees of Britain’s foreign policy establishment published a report on Britain in the future world. ??Entitled “The World in 2040: Renewing the UK’s Approach to International Affairs” my first reaction was that it read like an elongated job application to join the incoming Labour government. To? be fair, Tom Fletcher, Moazzam Malik, and Mark Sedwill make a host of sound proposals with which I agree, such as modernising and streamlining Britain’s external engagement, strengthening the National Security Council, and?better aligning London's instruments of British power with the aims of British policy. However, the report still reads like a?phony baloney globalist manifesto from those trapped in a no man’s land between values and interests.? It also reveals (again) that much of the British Establishment no longer believes in Britain as a power, or even believes Britain has a right to power.
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Phony Baloney Policy
There are two statements that reveal the extent to which managing decline and assuaging misplaced guilt remain the driving 'inspirations' of a failed British Establishment, not to mention much of academia. The first states that “Today, the UK is undoubtedly less politically and economically influential than in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. This trend is likely to continue given the simple arithmetic of demography and compound economic growth”.? Why?? Being very big and having lots of poor people is a curse not a blessing and no guarantee of economic growth. China faces demographic meltdown, India is a bureaucratic mess, the EU is like the old Forth Rail Bridge in that most of its enormous structure is devoted to simply holding itself up. It is also? trapped in a power struggle between centralising Eurocrats and decentralising democracy, whilst Russia is destroying its economy in a war. The real question those who lead Britain should answer is what role should a well-led top ten world economic and military power of 70 or so million relatively well-educated and networked souls which is at the centre of alliances and partnerships aspire to play in the world given that it is also a nuclear-armed island off the northwest coast of the Eurasian landmass?? ?Answer?? First, be far better led!
The second statement reads thus: “We cannot simply brush aside concerns around the UK’s historical legacy and questions of nationhood. The exit from the EU has opened many questions, including in Northern Ireland and Scotland. Former colonies are making increasingly vocal demands around the need for reparations from colonialism and compensation for the loss and damage arising from historical industrial emissions”.? Why not?? That was then and this is now.? If?British rule had been so bad why have so many of these sovereign countries kept so many of the structures and institutions Britain bequeathed them.? I want these countries to succeed and I am prepared to offer them British aid to do just that if it is in the British interest.? Equally, I also want in return a 21st century relationship with these countries, not some archaic post-colonialism that implies that Britain will only increase its influence in the future world by assuaging the unassuageable. Reparations for “historical legacy” would reduce British foreign policy to little more than virtue imperialism.
The Black Knight?
Listening to Sunak, Cameron et al I am reminded of the Black Knight in?Monty Python and the Holy Grail?who, despite having had his arms and legs chopped off by King Arthur continues to believe he is invincible. Fletcher, Malik and Sedwill even have the temerity to suggest that?“Over the medium term, allocate 1% GNI (Gross National Income) for international engagement to complement the commitment to 2% GDP defence spending”.? The use of 1% GNI is clever because it would be significantly larger than 1% GDP and as such is political sleight of hand designed to appeal to the Left of the Labour Party. They also call for defence expenditure to be measured only as a percentage of GDP, Gross Domestic Product, which is smaller.?Nice try, Chaps! This is yet more evidence of the strategic and power illiteracy at the heart of the British Establishment and their dangerous belief that Britain can only afford so much threat. Indeed, it is precisely why?Britain's security and defence policy is mired in the mother of all ends, ways and means crises.
Peace and Power
What Xi, Putin, the Ayatollahs and others are once again demonstrating is that a state can only have real influence if soft power is matched by relevant and relative hard power. ?Soft power without hard power is simply a covenant without a sword.?
Britain is either in a ‘pre-war’ situation which demands London must do everything to prevent it, or it is a peace.? To have a peacetime mindset in a pre-war situation is not only very, very dangerous but reveals the phony war at the top of a failed and failing government. It also reveals that the benighted government economists and their lawyer friends who really ‘rule’ London simply do not understand how wars start.? They start because some autocratic asshole with far more power than brains has a romantic dream about rebuilding a lost empire in the hope it will confirm his control over the state and is prepared to sacrifice most of those around him to do just that! ?
If we want peace, and I certainly do, now is the time for democracies like Britain to act irrespective of their immediate economic circumstances because now is the hour of danger. ?That means ending phony baloney power and policy which is making war more not less likely.? To do that, London must end the exaggeration of Britain's influence, self-flagellation of Britain’s past and face up squarely to Britain’s future.? I will NEVER apologise for my country or its past.? That is because I am an historian. If some people don’t like that…tough! ?
Julian Lindley-French
Royal Navy Veteran
6 个月Julian as ever you hit the nail on its head. But - and this is the deeply troubling dilemma - who cares!? You, I and others who subscribe to your wise words clearly do, but we are largely a choir singing in a church with no congregation. That congregation, to put it bluntly, are strategically myopic with British politicians of all colours, in the main, just mirrors of the sound bite, instant gratification and short termism social media dominated world we are now collectively ruled by. Well constructed argument that doesn’t deliver to that instant self interest is so much ‘chaff’ to the majority. The need for coherent grand strategy for a medium power such as the UK is of little interest as the consequences of failing to have such are not felt at real pain on the horizon. So, very reluctantly, I conclude our option, or rather fait accompli, is to await disaster and attempt to recover from it - regrettably that ‘plan’, so often used in the past, is doomed to failure for lack of time. If the danger is now close then even spending 3% today may not be enough. Shapps talks of ‘War Footing’ - loose hyperbole with no substance given the repeated warnings arrayed in front of our leadership. And John Healy is no better!!!
Independent Information Technology and Services Professional
6 个月Bravo!
Retired
6 个月The same abides for France and Germany.
Regional Operations Manager SCOTLAND:SSAFA,
6 个月14 years ago I was a fat staff officer in Helmand Task Force- 9 month continuity tour. During my short tenure, TFH, lost 90 soldiers. I remember writing in my journal,"do the British Government really understand what is going on"? Plus ca Change! Time for radical rethink on how we do warfare/foreign policy. Also please don't start me on how the DFID / FCO mission was hampered whether was hampered buy their inability to learn the lessons of the colonial era. 5 years after that tour I had dinner with a Pakistani two-star , with whom I had worked in the Congo. He told me enthusiastically that his brigade had used British doctrine from District officers from 1944 and found it useful. In 2010, our FCO colleagues were debarred from using the same sources of information. It would be quite difficult to quantify how many of our troops died as a result of this. What's the point of this rant? yes we need better leadership -both political and military. We need leaders who ""live in the world as it is not as they would like it to be "( to paraphrase Denis Healey). Frankly I don't care the color of the government of the UK; after the next election; I care that they understand Vegitius- and my kids don't have to fight the next war!