Aurelien – Starting From Zero. Finlandisation 2.0?

I’ve written several times now about the uncomfortable situation resulting from the coming defeat in Ukraine, and the unpleasant consequences for Europe that may result. I now want to make a few tentative suggestions about how it might be sensible for Europe to react. (The US is different, and I simply don’t know enough about the country to comment adequately.) My purpose here is not to give unsolicited advice to governments (unless you’ve worked in government you have no idea how irritating that can be) but rather to set out in simple terms what might be feasible. I begin with the strategic situation, I move on to constraints and then I set out a few possible ways forward.

First, European countries will find themselves in a position unprecedented in their history. Remember that for all that Europe is lazily described as the “Old Continent,” its existing political structure is very recent. Germany in its current form only dates from 1990, the Czech Republic and Slovakia from 1993. The unraveling of the Former Yugoslavia into independent nations did not really finish until the independence of Kosovo in 2008. (Come to that, Norway only obtained its own independence in 1905.) But more than that, the nation-state was not traditional in Europe: in 1914, most Europeans lived in Empires, as they always had. Moreover, large parts of Southeast Europe had then only recently freed themselves from centuries of domination by the Ottoman Empire: colonialism lasted longer in Europe than it did in sub-Saharan Africa, for example.

So the only vaguely comparable moment in European history to that of today is between, say, 1921 and 1938: between the end of the Russo-Polish War, and the beginning of German territorial expansion. That period was characterised by a desperate search for allies to avoid being surrounded or cut off, and a grotesque and complex diplomatic dance involving, amongst others, France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and Japan, in various combinations. It didn’t end well, as you may have heard. From the late 1940s until the end of the Cold War, relations were structured, in the East by Soviet domination and occupation, and in the West by membership of NATO and of the (then) European Community. There were special cases like Sweden, Finland and Austria, but they were less “special” in reality than they were survivors from the norms of another age. Since then, the profusion of new states and the progressive enlargement of the EU and NATO have brought added structural complexity to Europe, without much in the way of compensating advantages.

I argued last week that the existing political and security structures in Europe will not last much longer substantively, since they are no longer useful, although they will probably lead a continued ghostlike existence for some time. And indeed, whether or not they formally exist will make little difference to the issues I’m discussing today. NATO is no longer an effective military alliance, and the EU will be increasingly irrelevant to the sort of political and security questions which will arise soon. But in any case, it would be wrong to assume that that the foreign and security policies of member states were ever entirely dominated by the two organisations anyway. After all, the Greeks and the Turks had their own private quarrels in the Aegean for generations, and for the Greeks the enemy was not in Moscow but in Ankara. And at a lower level of intensity, the complex and multi-faceted relationship between France and Germany was a fundamental part of each country’s policy. Meanwhile, Benelux solidarity, Scandinavian solidarity, relations between Germany and Austria and Germany and Turkey, complicated the internal affairs of these organisations, and often crossed their boundaries.

But whatever formal structures may continue to exist, the reality is that for the first time since the 1920s, European nations will have to reflect seriously on their individual strategic situations and how to make the best of them. We are not in the 1990s, where Russia was on the floor, the US seemed to be all-powerful, and both the EU and NATO looked like promising structures to join. Indeed, we are almost exactly at the antipodes of such a situation. For Europeans, as I have previously argued, the transatlantic link has outlived whatever usefulness it may have retained in recent years: the US is no longer of any value as a counter to Russia, not can its word be relied on. On the other hand, the EU, whatever its other virtues may be, is not a forum in which European security questions can be properly addressed. So a return to bilateral and multilateral arrangements seems inevitable. But on what basis? I try to answer that question below.

Now there are two opposite temptations here, and you should look out for them in the torrent of words which will start to flow as defeat looms. The first could be described as “rearranging the furniture.” The question there will be, What is the least that we can actually do, whilst still appearing to do something? This is a standard recourse of governments, and in the frightening and confusing world which is now developing, we can expect it to appear very quickly. “Better coordination,” between European states. “An intensified programme of cooperation,” between the EU and NATO, inevitably “a stronger role for the Commission,” and a few off-the-wall gimmicks like a European network of defence studies institutes, and more exchanges between European war colleges and European defence industries. Yes, it’s a pretty grim and unimaginative list, but push a button and that’s what you’ll get in the short term. You’ll notice that all of these proposals begin from the solution, without asking what the problem is.

But is “better coordination,” necessarily even part of the answer? In the abstract, international coordination is a good thing. In reality, it often just means that representatives of different countries sit in stuffy rooms endlessly arguing about detail and torturing written texts into a final form that nobody likes, but that everyone can just about accept. Such a process very often reveals and exacerbates differences rather than resolves them, and generates texts and even “action plans” which just reflect the lowest common denominator, and so often produce nothing of value at all. The thinking behind such proposals is necessarily that the interests of the different countries are sufficiently similar that with a little flexibility on all sides, compromise is possible. In reality, this is rarely the case when significant issues are involved. NATO exercises with other countries? Who cares enough to argue? EU Training team in Guinea-Bissau? Who cares at all? For decades now, European states have not been obliged to take sides on genuinely difficult and divisive issues. Ukraine looked at first like an easy win for Europe, and everybody wanted to be associated with a victory. Now, European nations are sticking together out of fear of being seen as the first to jump off the sinking ship.

But there will come a time when the ship has foundered, and at that point, enormous divergences of interest will become apparent. That’s obvious even now, but it will be a lot more obvious as all of the grim and divisive second- and third-order consequences play themselves out, including many that we can only guess at, at the moment. And of course differences and dissent within an organisation are always much more damaging than any amount of argument between independent states, because they hurt the organisation itself.

The second temptation is to wild and impractical schemes, sometimes seriously intended, sometimes just put forward to make a political splash. They almost always follow the template of solutions offered to problems which are essentially unidentified. (remember “We must do something. This is something. OK, let’s do it?) Under this heading we will see proposals for a “European NATO,” a new European Defence Treaty, a European Nuclear Deterrent, strategic alliances with other countries we’ll get back to you with the details, a new European Army, a Commissioner for Defence in the EU, and no doubt many others, most of which will have been tried at some time in the past and failed.

Recent announcements about equipment purchases and increased defence spending come into this category, because there is no consideration of what such initiatives would actually be for or what they are intended to produce. They are essentially hand-waving: (“We must do something …”) Some things are clear straight away. Nations will not spend 5% of their GDP on defence, because even if they wanted to do so and their parliaments voted the money, it could not be spent. The Western economy, including that of the US, is simply not capable of supplying the resources to spend the money on, and there is no sign that western states could significantly enlarge the size of their armed forces anyway, either by recruitment or by conscription. The main effect of extra money being available would be inflation, as demand increased but probably not supply. (Ironically, spending on mundane items such as clothing, construction and vehicles would probably benefit the economy overall, but only to a small degree.)

And what is this equipment for? Nobody knows, except to underpin political slogans about “defending against Russia.” So far as I can see, exactly no thought has been given to practical issues. So, Minister, you are going to increase your tank fleet from 150 to 250 vehicles. You do know that nobody is going to build a factory for you, so your order will be tacked onto the end of others, and it will be at least five years before you see your first tank. You didn’t? And that you will need to completely revise the structure of your Army, create new units, find new commanders and subordinates, and order all sorts of ancillary and support equipment. You didn’t? You’ll need to decide an operational concept, and whether, for example, you want armoured or mechanised brigades and whether they are for home defence or deployment, since requirements will be different. You haven’t? Because tanks are no use by themselves, you’ll need to define orders of battle, work out which other types of weapons you will need (armoured fighting vehicles, artillery etc. etc) and place orders for them. You haven’t?

We are dealing, of course, with a preternaturally dim political class, and government structures which these days scarcely function. But we’re also dealing with a completely unprecedented situation, where, for the first time in a hundred years, European governments each have to devise an individual national defence and security strategy. From strategy ultimately come missions, tasks and doctrine—what do you want the armed forces to do Mr President?—and without doctrine there is no point in buying this or that equipment. During the Cold War, NATO had developed doctrines and an elaborate set of Force Goals. These Goals were seldom reached in practice, but they did provide some sort of context for national defence planning. After the Cold War, there were deployments in Bosnia and then in Afghanistan to provide a degree of collective context, and, since that time, things have, well, drifted a bit. Suddenly, western nations are confronted with existential questions which they have no experience of dealing with and to which, in my view, there are probably no satisfactory answers anyway.

Consider: in the 1920s and 1930s, defence in Europe was basically home-grown. Military service was the rule, and even small countries often had their own defence industry. Technology was advancing quickly, and equipment generally had a short life before being replaced by a more advanced version, or by something else: five years in-service for a fighter aircraft would be a long time. Production was rapid, and support was not that complicated. Literally none of that is true today: imagine that your Air Force desperately needs a new multirole aircraft. There are a restricted number on the market, the investment is colossal, it will take ten years for your fleet to be completely delivered, and the aircraft, with upgrades, will remain in service until 2060. You have to try to imagine what possible roles the aircraft may have in a generation’s time, as well, of course, as taking account of the plans of your neighbours and any allies.

But in many ways the problem is more fundamental than that. What are your armed forces actually for? (Hand-waving answers about fighting and winning wars are not allowed.) It is so long since national governments were obliged to confront this problem that it’s not even clear how they could go about it. At least in the 1930s, when fear of a general war was widespread, European nations could look at their neighbours, or their traditional enemies, to give them some idea of where to start. That is not possible now. Indeed, one of the benefits of NATO and the EU has been to bury traditional enmities to the point where war between western European states now seems unthinkable. In any case, no western state has military forces really capable of damaging the others.

Strategically, therefore, “Europe” (we’ll come back to those inverted commas) now finds itself militarily weak, without the possibility of rebuilding its military potential seriously, unable to rely on the US as a balancing factor, and confronted with an angry and resentful military superpower which is likely to pursue its interests without a great deal of sensitivity towards those of its western neighbours. Europe will be constrained by the lack of any obvious strategy, by the need to invest in systems with no idea whether they will ever be needed, and by the decline and possible disappearance of existing multinational structures.

The largest constraint by far, though, is the lack of any real security policy concept. Now it’s important to understand that “security” in this sense means much more than “defence,” let alone “military.” It is a policy for ensuring the security of the country, by whatever means seem best. But expressions of blind rage, spite and hostility towards Russia do not count as security policy, and for as long as those continue, Europe will be suspended in an intellectual void. It will take time for the present crew of political shysters and psychotic managerialists to be washed out of the system, but it has to happen. If that means a Russian strike on European territory in retaliation for some piece of nonsense launched from there, then I fear that is what we are going to get. And then, surveying the wreckage with incredulity, a new set of leaders, with luck wiser or at least less delusional than their predecessors, will have to start effectively from zero.

The next major constraint is the impossibility of any military challenge to Russia. Now there is no reason to suppose that the Russians have any desire to engage in conflict directly with the West (though see below), nor that they see any advantage in doing so. To the extent that such a conflict ever began, Russian conventional missiles would devastate much of western Europe, while Europe (or for that matter the US) would not be able to respond in kind. The Russians have a mostly impenetrable air defence screen, and any western aircraft that came close enough to launch missiles would be lucky to survive. Western air forces would be fortunate to manage a couple of missions before they and their airbases were essentially destroyed. In theory, this constraint could be overcome by the development of anti-missile systems and their deployment on a massive scale, but in practice this is not going to happen. Since the Russians aren’t going to seek a ground war, and the country is too far away to launch serious air attacks against it, this is a major complexity, as well as a major constraint.

In that context, the third major constraint is the lack of an obvious collective strategic interest, either within NATO or the EU (and remembering that the two are largely, but not entirely identical in membership.) In the past, this was less of a problem. In the Cold War, for example, all European NATO nations could expect to be involved in a general war with the Warsaw Pact in some way. Access to Soviet planning documents after 1990 confirmed what many had suspected: for the Soviet Union, a possible war, which they may quite seriously have expected the West to start, would be the Big One, The Final Battle, involving nuclear weapons and occupation of the whole of Europe. (There were detailed plans for the occupation of the Iberian peninsula, for example.) Whilst NATO never made plans at that level of ambition or detail for political reasons, it was still generally accepted that a future war would be apocalyptic and all-inclusive. Nothing remotely like that situation exists today. The Russian concern is not with acquiring territory but with securing its borders and pushing possible threats as far away as possible. This comes fairly close to a zero-sum game, as we’ll see, and Russian demands will be mainly political and military, rather than territorial.

In NATO, nations sit by convention in English alphabetical order, so that you now find Poland next to Portugal, and Sweden next to Spain. But just ask yourself for a moment what overlap there is in their strategic interest. Fair enough, Sweden is close to St Petersburg and the Murmansk naval base, Poland has a complicated and violent history with Russia. But their strategic situation is not the same, and neither has anything whatever to do with the strategic situation of Spain and Portugal.

In effect, there is already an implicit division of Europe into Near neighbours of Russia (including Norway, Sweden, the Baltics, and Finland), Farther neighbours including Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria etc, and Distant neighbours including Germany, France, Italy Spain and the UK. In the last case, it’s hard to see that there is any real commonality of interest with Russia’s Near neighbours. However, alliances and even political understandings tend to take this commonality as read: Estonia is a NATO member, North Macedonia is a NATO member, therefore … well, perhaps not very much, actually. The thinking behind alliance and political linkage is often expressed as “freedom is indivisible” or “the security of one is the security of all,” or some similar formula, which is only doubtfully true if we attend at all to history.

It’s not just that beyond a certain size the interrelations between large numbers of states become unmanageable, it’s also that your quarrel rapidly becomes everybody else’s quarrel as well. There is no reason to suppose that in any future crisis between Lithuania and Russia, nations further West have anything to gain by involving themselves on Lithuania’s side. They may or may not have sympathy for one side or the other, but actually providing practical or even political support is more likely to inflame the crisis than prevent it. History suggests that alliances aren’t always a good idea anyway. Although the “clockwork” image of the start of the First World War is recognised to be an oversimplification, it’s true that the War became generalised at the point it did because Russia felt it had no alternative but to support Serbia against Austria, whilst Germany felt it had no choice but to support its ally Austria against Russia. In each case, the tail wagged the dog. In the 1930s France believed that it was strengthening its position by alliances with Poland and Czechoslovakia, yet came to understand that it was not deterring a resurgent Germany, and that its notional allies were actually a source of weakness, a situation which is far more common than people like to admit.

This is not to say that states geographically removed from Russia will have no issues with that country. (The French are understandably angry that the Russians have been undermining their position in Africa, for example.) But it’s hard to see what the continuation of a military alliance would do to solve, or even alleviate, such problems. The real danger is that distant states become sucked into conflicts not of their own devising and not of their own seeking. This has been happening ever since there were states, and there is no reason to think the danger has gone away. It is most likely to show itself in an irrational and pointlessly confrontational reaction to the defeat in Ukraine. There is nothing sillier than making faces and mouthing insults when you have nothing to back them up with, but Russia, heir after all to centuries of suspicion about enemies to the West, is likely to over-interpret sulking and hissy-fits as something more serious. After all, you can imagine a Russian pundit saying, look, Germany was effectively disarmed in 1931 and see where they were decade later. You can’t be too careful! Indeed, if we are not content with the disaster of Ukraine and we want another and bigger one, that could well be Russian over-reaction to childish threats from the West.

If you accept then, that Europe (with or without the US) has no serious chance of facing up to Russia militarily, and that in any case the strategic interests of its member states will be too diverse to make this practicable, much of the current cloud of uncertainty is dissipated, or will be when reality finally sinks in. However, understanding this and drawing the right conclusions, are frankly beyond the current display of garden gnomes we have as leaders. At some point though, in different ways in different countries, more realistic leaders will emerge, because they always do. We must hope that this does not take too long.

What can we say about the options they will have? Well, firstly these options will be very much a product of geography and population. For the Near neighbours of Russia, there will be little choice but to adopt a conciliatory policy towards Moscow, to seek good relations and avoid doing anything that might upset the Kremlin. Intelligently managed—as was the case with Finland after 1945—this does not have to be a disaster. Indeed, wise politicians, if there are any, should be able to perform a balancing act between Russia and the West: the difficulty now is that one side of the balance is a lot weaker than it used to be. The danger, of course, is that widespread resentment of this subordinate status will bring nationalists to power, with unpredictable results. Here, I fear, there is the real possibility of overreaction by Moscow. Moving into the Baltic States, for example pour encourager les autres would not be difficult to do (it’s been done before) and there’s nothing in practice that the West can do about it.

The Farther neighbours will likewise have to avoid provoking Moscow, and begin the slow and delicate process of rebuilding political and economic relations. They will very much be the weaker players, but on the other hand, for the foreseeable future Russia will not be terribly interested in them, as long as they do not appear to constitute a threat. They will be encouraged to ask any remaining US forces to leave, and to become de facto neutrals. Whether this is feasible with anything like the current European political class, I doubt: indeed, some entire political systems may not survive the wrenching series of changes required.

The Distant neighbours, where we can include Britain and France, but also Germany, Italy and Spain, will have the most freedom of action, and much of the rest of this essay is devoted to them. Being relatively distant does not mean the task is necessarily easy. (For example, the British will have to accept, however difficult it might be, the depth of historic Russian paranoia about London’s “hidden” activities, and learn to allow for it.) But the one thing that is clear is that Europe is in the process of moving out of the post-1945 mould, and back to something much more traditional. In that context, the Distant neighbours will increasingly detach themselves from the others, not least because they have no resources available to influence Russian behaviour towards closer neighbours.

And what about this Russian behaviour? I have no idea what the Russians will do, and I’m not a specialist in the country. But we can make use of Inherent Political Probability, and a bit of history, and consider what a large and powerful nation in this situation might do. First of all, they will want to ensure that the sacrifices of the War are not in vain, and cannot easily be reversed. That means that no military threat can be launched against Russia which puts any of those gains in question. This requires a ring of states around Russia which are non-threatening, not just because their own military capacity is very limited, but more importantly because no foreign forces are allowed on their soil. This effectively dictates a Quisling regime in Kiev, which becomes an effective ally of Moscow, and takes primary responsibility for hunting down and eliminating any fanatical nationalists that survive. It also demands effective neutrality in the Baltic States and Finland, and possibly in Sweden and Rumania as well.

Second, and as a slightly different point, they will want to be able to say that the wider objectives of the war have been met. This may well require the wholesale dismemberment of Ukraine and the effective control of its political system and its economy, as well as substantial influence over the political systems of its Near neighbours. More widely, they will seek something like the outcome envisaged in their 2021 draft treaty with NATO. That draft was rejected—unsurprisingly, since accepting it would have been politically impossible at the time—but I suspect that the Russians will be back soon with something substantially similar. Thus, they will encourage, by overt and covert means, voices in Europe suggesting good relations with Russia, and they will cause problems for any more assertive actors. There are a number of political and economic levers available to do this overtly, and of course if they want to rattle sabres there will be no shortage of sabres to rattle. There is also an almost unlimited range of possible covert operations, with which the Russians have much experience.

Third, they will want to weaken and undermine western influence elsewhere. For example, the loss of the US Rammstein airbase in Germany would massively complicate any US attempt to mount operations in the Middle East. The Russians have already been busy undermining the French position in West Africa, feeding off a poisonous tradition of anti-French resentment that most English-speakers are unaware of, and off the remains of a historical memory of Moscow’s support for “liberation movements” during the Cold War. It’s doubtful whether the Russians expect to replace France in these countries—they don’t have the depth of knowledge or the capability, and Wagner has shown itself incapable of fighting the jihadists—but their purpose is essentially negative: to undermine French influence there. We can expect the same sort of attempts in the rest of Africa and also in Latin America, where the Russians will attempt to undermine the US position. More generally, they will seek to weaken NATO, which they consider a threat, and probably the EU as well.

All of this is fairly elementary. The question is how, if at all, to react. I say “if at all” because by now I think we are past the point where knee-jerk opposition to everything the Russians do makes any sense. In practical terms Russia’s Near neighbours will have to be considered as part of their sphere of influence, and there’s nothing much that can be done about it. But remember I said earlier that I am concerned here with security policy, not just, or even mostly, military and defence issues. Security policy includes everything from diplomacy through police and customs, to intelligence, to defence and the military, all, at least in theory, as part of a common strategy. So the first thing that has to be worked out is an overall strategy towards a victorious and angry Russia.

The first priority, obviously, is not to make things worse. The West would come off significantly worse in any armed clash, and it has every interest in de-escalating and calming the situation. That said, it is not obvious, for the reasons given above, that “the West” will be able to develop a common position. So let us confine the argument to the Far neighbours, notably Britain, France, Germany, Spain and Italy, who are all a long way from Russia and do not need to involve themselves with its more immediate neighbours. For them, Russia does not have to be the only, or even the main, priority. For example, many western and southern European states, face a much greater threat from uncontrolled immigration, generally organised by criminal cartels, and accompanied by their representatives. There are parts of many European cities now where drug gangs effectively rule, and where the forces of the state, including health and emergency services, cannot go for fear of attack. Sober voices now characterise countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands as incipient narco-states, where the state’s monopoly of legitimate violence is no longer guaranteed. There are areas of French cities run by drugs gangs more numerous and more heavily armed than the police. Public opinion—especially among the immigrant communities themselves—is much more concerned about these issues than about nebulous threats from Russia. This is in turn only a part of the wider threat from Transnational Organised Crime and various forms of terrorism, which collectively largely outrank any “threat” from Russia by some distance.

That said, the next priority will obviously be to develop a better understanding of Russia and what its leaders want. The kind of ignorant, superior, dismissive approach that has characterised the last generation will no longer do. Genuine experts on the country will be needed, and overall policy should be geared to “living with Russia”, not mindlessly opposing every Russian action. Likewise, the overall intelligence effort needs to be stepped up and improved in quality (with the emphasis on ‘intelligence’) but this is not to say that Russia would be the major target for all, or even most, European countries. Conversely, there will be areas where European countries and Russia can actually cooperate, and it is pointless to seek to spite the Russians for the sake of it, the more so since it will only further encourage an angry Russia to reciprocate.

All that said, there will roles for military forces and defence assets generally, but primarily a political and strategic ones. Machiavelli’s dictum that the man who goes unarmed goes un-respected is unfortunately true in international relations, where states with capable and effective militaries provide governments with strengths and advantages they would not otherwise have. This is not a simple arithmetic relationship: the armed forces of Egypt are larger than those of Algeria, but Algeria is a regional military power and Egypt is not.

One of the two main roles is the assertion of sovereignty: a word (and concept) that has largely been forgotten. The existence of armed forces, even on a limited scale, is an assertion of national sovereignty and independence. It’s not a question of banally “defending” the country, but rather, as was the norm in history and is still the norm outside Europe, providing a visible national political symbol. Reverting to such a concept after generations of marching beneath multinational flags will be difficult for some to accept, but will actually do a lot to garner public support for the military and promote recruitment. It’s interesting that in France, which has always had an unambiguously nationalist view of its military, public support is still strong and recruitment is less of a problem than in many other countries. Paradoxically, all this actually makes international cooperation easier, because it will be on the basis of genuine common interest, not obligation.

Of course it’s not all parades either. Policing air and maritime frontiers is an important practical role for the military, and will help to dictate where the money goes. In this context, traditional roles such as intercepting Russian aircraft over the North Sea will retain their importance. It doesn’t matter whether in practice the European A123 is technically inferior to the Russian Z456, because the aircraft are not going to fight: they are playing out a traditional game which influences the political calculus of the various countries.

The second role derives from Clausewitz’s much-misquoted and much misunderstood dictum that the existence of the military enables “the continuation of state policy with the addition of other means.” In other words, the military are an extra tool in the box as needed. Here, the brutal fact is that serious military powers have more influence, both regionally and globally, than unserious ones, and this is reflected in the UN and elsewhere, in discussions about crises in the world, in the management of these crises and in proposed solutions. If the Canadians turned up with a plan for a Gaza peacekeeping force, no-one would bother to listen to them.

Europe will still have two of the P5 states, and thus two of the world’s nuclear weapon states. Some kind of “Eurobomb” is another silly idea not worth thinking about, and the notion of a nuclear “umbrella” was always a journalistic fallacy. But having two nuclear powers in Europe does have visible and measurable effects on the political balance, and British and French cooperation on nuclear weapons, which is obviously sensible, has only advanced by baby steps, but is probably going to become inevitable.

A continent practising what used to be called “non-provocative defence” and using its armed forces as a way of preserving the greatest degree of sovereignty and independence, is a long way from the fever-dreams of our current political class, but it’s the only sensible way to go. In the past, that would have been sneeringly dismissed as “Finlandisation,” although in fact the Finns did quite well out of the policy. We now need to learn the rules of Finlandisation 2,0.