War with Russia

Since I wrote the preface for the UK hardback edition of this book in May 2016, everything I predicted has come to pass and we are now in an even more perilous situation. Russia has been ramping up its so-called “snap” exercises with up to 40,000 troops at a time, suddenly and without prior warning, practicing the overthrow and occupation of the Baltic States. American naval ships have been buzzed at low level by Russian fighters in the Baltic Sea and there has been a massive buildup of Russian military force in the vicinity of the Baltic States with three Motor Rifle divisions (around 60,000 personnel) since January 2016. In the words of Dmitri Trenin of the Carnegie Moscow Center, the Kremlin has been in a state of war with the West since 2014. While not yet in the Baltic chicken coop, the wolf is prowling around the still very flimsy fence. We are, de facto, in a new, and much more dangerous, form of Cold War.

Meanwhile, the international institutions on which the US and Europe’s transatlantic defense and security depends, NATO and the EU, are coming under increasing pressure. Yes, NATO has now agreed to send four individual battalions from the USA, Canada, Germany, and Britain to the Baltic States and eastern Poland. While this is a start, no one should be under any illusions that this is anything but a political token. First, it will take some time to deploy those battalions, which may itself encourage the Russian president to conduct a preemptive strike before they are in position. Second, without proper command and control and the artillery, engineers, attack helicopters, and logistics to turn individual battalions into an effective fighting brigade, and spread out over four countries, those four battalions would be picked off piecemeal should Russia attack. At the same time, NATO is itself unexpectedly weakened by the fallout from the attempted military coup in Turkey, which threatens to emasculate its second largest military power and render it ineffective and increasingly unstable as a result of the swinging purges against its armed forces.

Most recently, in July 2016, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, in an interview with the New York Times, cast doubt on America’s willingness to come to the aid of a NATO ally under attack. At a stroke, this comment has undermined the notion of NATO’s founding principle of collective defense. NATO is totally dependent on strong US leadership and peace in Europe will only be maintained if there is absolute certainty that the US will always be there to defend its allies. Trump’s comments will embolden the Russian president and make the nightmare scenario in this book more likely.

At the same time, the EU is itself faced with an existential crisis following the British vote to leave in the June 2016 referendum. Britain itself not only faces a potential breakup of the Union following the resounding Scottish vote to remain in the EU, to say nothing of the risk to the Northern Ireland peace process, but also has been plunged into political and economic turmoil with inevitable implications for its international standing and its armed forces as the full fiscal impact of BREXIT is felt. At the very least, maintaining defense spending at even a creatively accounted 2% of GDP will be little comfort if GDP shrinks as a result of the economic consequences of BREXIT.

Meanwhile, the one man doubtless rubbing his hands together in glee at this turmoil has been the Russian president sitting in his office in the Kremlin. Britain, once Europe’s premier military power, seemed set on a course of moral and physical disarmament. As a young KGB officer in East Germany during the Cold War, Putin recalled the respect in which Britain, under its “Iron Lady” prime minister, was held by Russia for its bold recapture of the Falkland Islands in 1982. Britain had said they would do what seemed near impossible and had gone ahead and done it. That combination of a show of arms and quiet but grim political resolve had given Britain huge political capital. Clearly that stubborn resolve, so respected and admired across the world, had evaporated. Britain was now becoming little different from any other semi-pacifist, European social democracy; more interested in protecting welfare and benefits than maintaining adequate defenses.

If Britain’s enemies concluded that it was fast losing the will to fight for what it believed in, much of Europe never had the will to start with. Moreover, the US was now looking to the threats and opportunities of the East, instead of the old world of the West.

This is the story of how the West failed to heed the warning signals from Russia, unwittingly emboldened its president, and, through a succession of disastrous policy decisions, blundered over the edge of the precipice to war.