CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY
EUROPEAN SECURITY: SHARING RISKS AND RESPONSIBILITIES
TALLINN, ESTONIA
7TH MAY 2014
For many citizens on the European continent, the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 did not bring the result they had prayed for. While celebrations echoed through the streets of Paris and London, there was, in Churchill’s words, an Iron Curtain descending across the continent. For the absence of war does not equate to peace. Peace requires not only an end of conflict, but the freedom from tyranny, oppression and injustice. It would take more than 40 years for Europe to ultimately achieve the peace that its peoples sought.
The free peoples of Western Europe, along with our North American allies, the United States and Canada, recognised that the battle against Soviet communism would require a coordinated and sustainable response.
It was thus that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) was born on 4 April 1949. It was both a political and military Alliance, determined to keep at bay the threats to freedom that both totalitarian ideology and military might posed. NATO grew by including Greece and Turkey in 1952, West Germany in 1955, and then later Spain in 1982. Of course, after the Cold War, and despite Russian opposition, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined in 1999. 2004 saw Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania become members and most recently, in 2009, Albania and Croatia.
The political and security framework for Europe that NATO provided was augmented in the 1950s by a new economic framework which would eventually give rise to today’s European Union. This provided another aspirational destination for those nations who eventually emerged into the Democratic European family from military dictatorships, such as Spain, Portugal and Greece.
By the late 1980s, there was no disguising the failures of the Soviet Union, the successes of Western European capitalism and faced with a tidal wave of popular insurrection, the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet empire crumbled.
So, it is worth reminding ourselves that the Cold War did not simply end, it was won. It was won because not only did the West have the economic power to continue to modernise its military capabilities, but because the concept of freedom and self-determination, the bedrock of West European politics, was in tune with the instincts of human nature in a way that communism was never able, and never could be able to be. The fall of the Soviet Union finally ushered in a period of peace and security for most of the peoples of continental Europe, though in some areas, notably the Balkans, the release of pent-up ethnic and religious tensions lead to new conflicts.
Here, in the Baltic States, a new era of stability and prosperity was ushered in that remains to this day.
But let us remember that this was not a European achievement alone. Without the economic might, the military strength and political commitment of the United States, in particular, the result might have been very different.
Those who today, wish to see a distancing of the European Union from the United States would do well to reflect on the successes of our recent history together and what the alternative might have been.
If we are to maintain and nurture the successes of the victory in the Cold War, then we need to understand, maintain and nurture the instruments that made it possible – economic strength, our military power and our political values and cohesion. That includes the invisible bonds of freedom and security that have held the family of free nations together across the Atlantic for more than half a century.
STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES
Yet today it is a source of concern that too many people seem to believe that the peace, prosperity and security we enjoy is the natural state of affairs. It is not. It is the duty of every generation to make its own contribution to our political commitment to freedom, the economic strength that is required to fund our defences and the political will to act when our shared security is threatened.
From the high point of Western strength in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, a misplaced sense of comfort has resulted in too many NATO members dropping their guard and re- directing the promised defence spending into other, more politically attractive, areas. This has left many European countries, both defensively weaker and welfare addicted. As both Chancellor Merkel and Prime Minister David Cameron have repeatedly pointed out, EU countries now account for 7% of the global population, 25% of global GDP but 50% of global social spending.
The ironic result of all these decisions, taken together, is that many of those countries who seek to create space between themselves and American foreign policy have instead made themselves more dependent than before on the United States. How long US taxpayers and policymakers will tolerate the free riding Europeans is an increasingly live topic in American politics and European leaders need to take seriously.
Of course, there have been notable successes and close cooperation within NATO since the end of the Cold War. The way in which NATO took command of the international coalition in Afghanistan, the success in coordinating action in the Gulf War, following the invasion of Kuwait, and the campaign in Libya showed how the command structure of NATO could be used to fortify international action.
Probably the most successful NATO action came in the Balkans where repressed nationalism exploded following the dissolution of the Soviet Empire. On 28 February 1994 NATO undertook its first wartime action when it shot down four Bosnian Serb aircraft which were violating the no-fly zone. NATO airstrikes in the following year eventually resulted in the Dayton agreement of November 1995.
In Kosovo, NATO began a 78 day bombing campaign on 24 March 1999, in an effort to stop the Milosovic Serbian- led crackdown on Albanian civilians. The subsequent international peace plan was accepted on 3 June 1999 and NATO then established the KFOR peace keeping force whose impact is still being felt today.
THE NEED FOR ENERGY SECURITY
Successes, yes, but there are weaknesses today within our alliance that need to be dealt with if we are to provide the sort of security and cohesion in the future that we have been able to do in the last half-century.
The lack of political cohesion that is, to an extent, an unavoidable risk of nation states voluntarily sharing sovereignty in security matters, was highlighted during the Libyan crisis when the German government not only refused to take part in military activities but abstained alongside China and Russia at the United Nations. On the military equipment front, far too little progress has been made in ensuring that the enablers of military operations are fully available. Again, in the Libyan crisis, despite a number of European NATO members stepping up to the plate, without American air-to- air refuelling and ISR capabilities, the campaign would not have been possible.
The increased indebtedness of Western nations which has put pressure on defence budgets remains a major problem and the lack of willingness of governments to accept debt as a long-term strategic weakness is a worrying tendency. Likewise, the failure to promote diversification of supply as a means of increasing energy security has become an issue for those directly involved because of their fuel needs and those indirectly involved because of their economic interdependence.
Economically, Europe has allowed itself to become too dependent on one country much of our energy needs. No example better demonstrates this than Germany.
Back in 2004, Russian human rights activist Sergei Kovalyov accused Germany of sacrificing long-held values of freedom and democracy in exchange for a few euros. Quoted in Der Spiegel, he said this of the then German chancellor Gerhard Schröder: "What the chancellor is doing with Russia isn't just morally wrong, it is also dangerous." Many think his words an understatement. Schröder reaped the reward for his deference to Putin by accepting a job as chairman of the Nord Stream consortium – a majority Gazprom-owned pipeline –while his country developed a worrying dependence on Russian energy, made even worse by their abandonment of their civil nuclear programme. Germany now gets around a third of both its gas and oil from Russia, which for a country that still depends on fossil fuels for most of its energy needs is worrying. How infuriating it must be for Chancellor Merkel to now hear Schroder’s defence of Russian actions in the Ukraine at the hands of the man he called “a perfect democrat”.
It is, of course, not just Germany that suffers from energy insecurity. The EU is the world’s largest energy importer, relying on foreign supplies for around 54 percent of its energy consumption. Yet the solution to this dilemma has long been known. As former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once said, “safety and certainty in oil lie in variety and variety alone”. There has been too little focus on alternative sources of energy both in the means of generation and the geographical sources of origin.
THE RUSSIAN CHALLENGE
But energy supply is not, of course, the only security problem emanating from Russia.
For too long, the serial bad behaviour of Putin’s Kremlin has been ignored. The strong desire to see Russia develop as a pluralistic democratic society, has allowed wishful thinking to take the place of critical analysis on far too many occasions. What we are witnessing in Ukraine today is not a new Russian pattern of behaviour. We have seen a former KGB officer, who views the world in the same way the old Soviet Union did, biding his time until he perceived the balance of power tip his way and he has been well rewarded for his wait as the West fails to deliver on some of the most important issues of the day.
Putin watched the reaction of the West while he bullied Ukraine over the supply and price of Russian gas and he saw that we did nothing. He sent his troops into Georgia, where he now has a force of 10,000 occupying 20 per cent of the country. Again we did nothing. We even went so far as to not refer to it as an occupation. In my book, if you have foreign troops on your sovereign soil, installing bases and refusing to leave, then that is an occupation. Russia launched a major cyber attack on Estonia, a Nato member, and still we did not act. What’s more, when the Russian-backed Assad regime used chemical weapons against its own people, and President Obama’s ‘red lines’ over Syria evaporated overnight, Putin drew the obvious conclusions.
Putin’s government is a bullying and thuggish regime. Russia has ruthlessly deployed its gas exports as a strategic weapon. Just as a drug dealer gets their addict hooked and can then demand any price they like, Putin had no qualms about exploiting the weakness of neighbouring energy-dependent states.
In addition, in the aftermath of the Euro crisis, Russia has been quick to distribute cash to countries ‘in need’, seeking to influence and corrupt their newly democratic institutions in the hope of creating sympathetic, if not client states. He has issued Russian passports, on the most spurious grounds, to enable ‘ethnic Russians’ to become Russian citizens, and so create the perfect pretext to defend them against any perceived, imaginary or invented threats.
Make no mistake, this is an expansionist Russia echoing its imperialist past. If you are looking for an example of where this behaviour is currently being played out, then look no further than the Balkans. In Bosnia, Russia is treating the smaller entity of Republika Srpska as a separate country by feeding it with money and hopes of secession.
It is typical of a pattern of behaviour where Putin seeks to create a small but significant foothold in areas where NATO has influence and interest, such as it now has in Kaliningrad and Georgia. All these elements are present in the crisis in Ukraine. Putin has observed weak Western leadership, with electorates tired of external conflicts after Iraq and Afghanistan, neglecting their outside space and too focused on increasingly internal short-term interests.
What is worse, I am astonished and appalled when I hear Western politicians talk about their admiration for Putin. Which of these aspects of his behaviour do they most revere? Have they forgotten about the murder of Litvinenko on the streets of London? Or the murder of Anna Politskaya? Maybe they have not noticed the disappearance of media critics or the frequency of fatal accidents which seem to afflict perceived critics of the regime.
What will be the next manifestations of the Putin Kremlin’s power grab? Let me suggest two. The first is the continued attempt to increase Russian influence in the high North where Arctic oil and gas deposits and the opening up of sea lanes as ice recedes increase the strategic importance of the region.
The second is the attempt to use oligarchs’ money to influence elections in Russia’s near neighbours, in order to produce more Kremlin friendly political outcomes. Big money, political interference, destabilisation and then military intervention is a template that we have seen before.
THE CHALLENGE TO INTERNATIONAL LAW
Let no one underestimate the importance of what is happening in the Crimea today and the implications for international peace. What President Putin has effectively said is that the protection of ethnic Russians is not the duty of the state in which they live. It does not lie in the laws and courts of the states in which they reside, nor is it the responsibility of any elected government. What the Kremlin is now saying is that the protection of ethnic Russians is the responsibility of an external state, Russia, which, by extension, has the right to interfere anywhere and at any time they see fit. This drives a coach and horses through all our accepted principles of international law, and if it is not faced down, then no country with an ethnic Russian population can be secure in the future.
It is utterly disingenuous for Moscow to now say it cannot control the flames consuming the Ukraine. They lit the match and started the fire. They bear the main responsibility.
We must be firm in our response to this challenge to international law. This must be seen as the point where we fundamentally reassessed our attitude to the Putin government. This cannot be a suspension of the G8. It must be the end of the G8 until there is a profound change in Russian behaviour. The beefing up of Baltic air defences must be permanent, not temporary. NATO exercises must become more extensive and frequent and we must halt defence exports to Russia, including the 1.2 billion euro French warship order.
A CRISIS OF VALUES
Yet, the crisis in the Ukraine today is about much more than physical security. It is a crucial test of our values and of our commitment to international law.
It is worth looking at some of the language used in the original NATO treaty. It is not simply about security and the use of military hardware. The preamble to the treaty talks about countries that are determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. Later, the treaty talks about member states strengthening their free institutions, by bringing about a better understanding of the principles upon which these institutions are founded, and by promoting conditions of stability and well-being.
It is not only in relation to Russia, that I believe we have been found wanting in the defence of our shared values in recent years.
I wrote in my book “Rising Tides” how I still feel angry about what I see as the West’s abandonment of the democracy movement in 2009 in Iran, not only because we failed to give support to those who needed it but because we failed to reinforce the universal nature of the values we hold and missed a historic opportunity to show that our quarrel is not with the people of Iran but with the leadership of the regime. It stands in stark contrast to the leadership we showed in the years of the Cold War, particularly in the latter years. When the Solidarity labour union was founded in 1980, with its membership eventually swelling to almost one third of the working Polish population, highly vocal political support and encouragement echoed from Ronald Reagan’s White House, Margaret Thatcher’s Downing Street and the Vatican of Pope John Paul II. This moral support, played out on the world stage, was instrumental in enabling Lech Walesa and his supporters to stand firm against the government of General Jaruzelski even during the years of martial law and political repression. The United States even provided covert financial support for Solidarity, estimated at as much as $50 million. Thus, Western policy was able to combine internal dissent against the regime with the external pressure being applied by military and economic means to the Soviet bloc.
THE CHALLENGES AHEAD
We need to fully understand both our political and military roles in the rapidly changing world in which we now find ourselves. And we are not short of risks in an era of globalisation in which our interests are much more interdependent than ever before.
It is an era that offers great opportunity and hope, but also the unavoidable importation of strategic risk. The risk of failing and failed states, the growth of transnational terrorism, the implications of global financial imbalances and the competition for sometimes scarce global commodities are all issues that we will have to deal with. The lessons we have already learned about global contagion from the terrorist attacks of 911, the health implications of SARS and the economic ramifications of the 2008 banking crisis should leave us in no doubt that the era when problems could simply be ignored as being “over there” has been left behind.
We are also seeing new disturbing political forces closer to home. The rise of extreme political parties, particularly those with strong nationalist sentiment, based often on the hostility to one group of foreigners or another, should give us cause for concern. Ideas of secession across the European continent risk the further weakening and fragmentation of the nation states on which our security has been built. In the United Kingdom, on 18 September, Scotland will vote in a referendum on independence. It is an issue that will have implications for NATO for the Scottish government has made it clear that if they achieve independence, they will wish to become a nuclear-free State, almost certainly making it impossible for them to join the nuclear NATO Alliance. This in turn will have consequences for both the defence of air space and territorial waters with an inevitable extra burden falling on other North European states such Nordic and Baltic partners. It would also have major implications for the UK’s nuclear deterrent, currently based at Faslane, as well as defence employment, skills and investment in Scotland itself.
Our security threats are numerous and they have metamorphosed in recent decades from the subversion of the Cold War, to domestic inspired terrorism and the emergence of transnational threats such as Al Qaeda. They evolve and change constantly. And it is not only our physical security that is threatened.
Industrial espionage is endemic. Research and innovation is being targeted. So are our trade secrets and academic research with the result that our intellectual property - our guarantee of future prosperity - is being torn from us by those who seek to weaken us economically or who are frankly, enemies of our states.
In an era in which our enemies are no longer restricted to the boundaries on a map, one in which they could be anywhere in the world behind a computer, the job of the intelligence services is harder than it’s ever been and constantly getting harder. While the internet provides hitherto unimaginable opportunities for the transfer of information, it comes with an unavoidable dark side. It provides a plethora of outlets for terrorists to communicate covertly. It provides them with a platform to radicalise, recruit and organise. It exposes people to uncensorable violent material which can induce some to commit violent acts themselves.
Of course, it would be immensely useful to our objectives if the terrorists and serious criminals used one means of communication and we all used something else. Alas, this is not the case and the internet is rather more akin to a haystack of communication in which the terrorist’s needle can easily hide.
It’s also not just terrorist threats that our security services are combating in a vast and fast-moving online world. They also do a commendable job uncovering those involved in online sexual exploitation of children within our countries, including from overseas. Their role is to break the paedophile ring before they snatch children from their family.
Because so much of the lives and activities of our citizens are moving on to the Internet, it is essential that our security services are able to move there too because the threats against them will also be there.
It is not our security agencies who undermine freedom or democracy. It is the terrorists, the criminals and the enemies of our country who seek to do so. What sort of distorted logic suggests that compromising our security agents, potentially putting their lives in danger, is a service to democracy?
Our security forces may have to intervene in the privacy of individual citizens when both the safety and security of fellow citizens and even the state itself are threatened. If they do, they do so within the limitations that are rightly placed upon them by the law in our democracies, and in line with the principles of necessity and proportionality.
Those who think that Edward Snowden performed a public service may wish to reassess their position the first time a paedophile ring or a terrorist attack are successful because their perpetrators had been told by Snowden and his acolytes how they were being monitored.
We live in the era of the invisible enemy were the primary aim of those who seek to oppose our interests will be focused on denying us access to our own capabilities, rather than following the more expensive route of matching those capabilities. We will need to develop the appropriate doctrine, backed by both the political will and the financial commitment required to deal with what will be an emerging, intensifying and expensive threat.
There is no country in the world that understands this threat better than Estonia and the centre of excellence which you have developed here should be regarded by other NATO allies as an excellent foundation upon which to build the capabilities that we will undoubtedly require.
The challenges we face are not essentially new but they are constantly evolving. We require both the constant application of principle as well as the ability to adapt politically, economically and technologically if we are to keep pace with the threats we will encounter. We have come far together. If we are true to our values and beliefs, we have so much further to go.