Midway through James Joyce’s Ulysses, the character J.J. O’Molloytips his hat to ‘Our watchful friend, the Skibbereen Eagle’, a playful reference to an obscure provincial newspaper in the west of Ireland. Under an ambitious new editor, the Skibbereen Eagle had risen fleetingly to prominence in 1898 for its robust response to Tsar Nicholas II’s attempts to gain a warm-water port for the Russian navy by encroaching on China’s Yellow Sea. As its editorial warned in a chiding tone, the Eagle would ‘keep its eye on the Emperor of Russia and all such despotic enemies – whether at home or abroad – of human progression and man’s natural rights’.
The Tsar, so the joke went, must have been quaking in his boots at the steely glare trained upon him from a quaint market town on the Atlantic fringes of north-western Europe.
Overlapping crises are coming thick and fast: the future of the Gulf, the survival of Ukraine and even Nato
There have been times, since the war in the Gulf erupted at the end of February and with Russian warships lurking in the English Channel, when one could be forgiven for seeing the silhouette of the Skibbereen Eagle in the collective European response.
It has been strong on the cycle of pronouncements, phone calls and communiqués but a little lighter on action. There have been vague expressions of willingness to put some hardware in theatre – in this case minesweepers, drones and frigates – at some future point. But that commitment would only be to help police a theoretical agreement after the fighting stops. There are similarities here to the ‘coalition of the willing’ approach on Ukraine, which is important but contingent on others reaching a military stalemate or negotiating a stable peace.
Perhaps that will change with the UK-France-led summit that was announced this week. The domestic politics in both London and Paris make a new assertion of European muscle in coordination with our American ally very unlikely in the short term. Yet there is a real danger for the West that our current crouch on the sidelines risks making our future more perilous still. While some are hoping that this moment marks a decisive breach between Europe and the US, between the shrewd middle powers and the rogue elephant in the White House, the reality is that our interests still lie in a cordial, if hardheaded, accommodation with American power and the augmentation of our own strength in parallel.
Of course, European governments will feel vindicated by the way they have distanced themselves from Donald Trump’s ill-planned military adventurism in Iran. Even traditionally hawkish supporters of action against the ayatollahs have compared this war to the Suez crisis. The initial decision to prevent the use of UK bases for an offensive attack has created clear blue water between the government and the Trump administration. And that suits Labour sentiment.
Keir Starmer is all too aware of the electoral price Labour paid when his predecessor Tony Blair decided to side with a Republican president in a Middle Eastern war. When the Prime Minister talks about ‘the lessons of Iraq’ he is thinking not just of the risks of regime change abroad, he is also seeking to safeguard his own position at home. He hopes that he can weather adverse election results next month by presenting himself as the prudent guardian of the national interest and the protector of the nation’s progressive conscience.
But his hopes of providing reassurance to voters at a time of turmoil have been upset this week by the intervention of George Robertson, former Labour defence secretary, Nato secretary-general and author of the government’s Strategic Defence Review. Lord Robertson’s warning that the government is complacent on defence spending reduces the space to argue that Starmer is the only leader to be trusted on national security.
If Plan A is not being followed then you had better have a workable Plan B. Old hands in government with whom I have worked recognise that if the UK is simultaneously more distant from the US and failing adequately to fund defence commitments in our own near neighbourhood, then two of the principal pillars of our enduring national security strategy are in danger.
There are now a succession of overlapping crises coming thick and fast – the future of the Gulf, the survival of Ukraine and perhaps even Nato – which a transatlantic rift, whoever is to blame, makes far more acute.
Anti-Trump schadenfreude has predictably dominated a lot of the European commentary. And many have chosen the moment to re-run their pet arguments over the necessity of abandoning the one-sided special relationship for ever. But serious figures such as Lord Sedwill and Sir Alex Younger know that we cannot just airily take our leave of enduring Atlantic ties. They have been at pains to point out that the very worst outcome for the UK and its allies is an emboldened Iran – with many of its teeth knocked out but an unchecked ability to shut its jaw around the Strait of Hormuz.
The real intellectual and diplomatic efforts now need to be deployed in working towards a coordinated solution that is a better outcome for everyone in the West and our partners in the region, rather than letting tensions exacerbate further.
The damage to the Iranian military establishment has been immense but the regime retains its nuclear knowledge and the enriched material needed for its long-term capacity to build a bomb. The Iranian leadership tried to safeguard its position during the talks in Islamabad, offering only flimsy progress on the nuclear issue and effectively keeping control of the strait. The White House cannot accept that – and so it seems likely there will be at least one more major crank of the wheel.
And so to the blockade. One of the proposals that has gained some traction is that put forward by two senior figures at the Hoover Institution (where I am a visiting fellow), Niall Ferguson and Philip Zelikow, with Richard Haas of the Council on Foreign Relations. As a first step, this put forward the idea of a counter-blockade to prevent Iran setting the terms of transit in the strait via its threats to non-friendly shipping and toll system for those tankers it chooses to let pass. This – essentially current US policy – is to force Iran to confront the prospect of completely losing its oil revenue.
Second, it suggests this should be accompanied by the opening up of a back channel where there is agreement to let Iranian exports pass through but only via US discretion. Third, it proposes some type of new agreement for the strait, along the lines of the Montreux convention which operates in the Black Sea and has essentially held through the war in Ukraine.
The government has already rushed to distance itself from the US blockade. Wise minds, like my colleague Professor Alessio Patalano, think there is a chance the Americans could succeed but point out just how perilous an operation it is going to be.
Here, of course, is where better coordinated action with the Europeans could help. For all the European consternation, the situation is in many ways a fable of the new world order, in which a return to the status quo antebellum is unattainable without the will and the way to bring it about. And that is why the Robertson intervention matters so much. Properly funding our own defence capabilities can give us both a say in determining the future in the regions that matter to us and make us more relevant in any and all US calculations.
We have a stake in ensuring the free flow of trade through the Persian Gulf and other critical waterways like the Malacca or Taiwan straits. We have interests in stabilising the Nato and Ukrainian front line in eastern Europe. And we will be profoundly affected by the way in which the major engineering and energy firms are even now planning new pipelines and infrastructure to safeguard future oil and gas flows towards the West.
Decisions in all these arenas will determine our future prosperity. So as we pivot towards an economy in which AI will play an ever-bigger role and the need for electricity only rises, securing our supply of a combination of heavy metal and new technologies will become only more important. Some of the countries most critical to these developments are middle powers currently at the centre of conflicts, from Ukraine to Iran.
If we are to have genuine future security, we must be able to deploy hard power, alongside strong allies to safeguard our interests in a range of domains. But as it stands, without the assets and the will to enforce the things that we hold dear, all the Skibbereen Eagle can do is flap and squawk at a distance.
Future historians of this period may conclude that the rolling psychodrama of the Trump administration consumed too much of our collective attention. Soon, perhaps starting after the midterms, there will be a stampede of Europeans and others to curry favour with whatever comes next – a race in which Britain may find itself uncomfortably behind big-spending Germany, which is finally getting serious on defence.
That is why the hard realities of secure energy, reindustrialisation, access to rare earths, investment in technology and a truly agile and modern army, navy and air force require our attention. Let us hope that we are able to look back fondly on Lord Robertson’s cri de cœur on the state of the UK armed forces as the moment at which the penny finally dropped.
Comments