The Long War II

Commodore Philip Thicknesse is a Falklands War veteran and career

warfare officer and aviator, Philip Thicknesse is an international

adviser at the Project for Study of the 21st Century (PS21). He

previously directed the UK Defence Crisis Management Centre,

Maritime Warfare Centre and commanded British Forces South

Atlantic Islands.

About 20 years ago I visited St Petersburg as part of a Royal Navy deployment. We were hosted with

great generosity and friendliness by the Russian Navy, given detailed tours of one of their latest

warships and taken to Kronstadt Island. There was a distinct sense of unreality about the whole visit,

of being in a place one simply had no expectation of ever seeing, let alone under these

circumstances. My generation of naval officers had been trained, very rigorously, to fight and defeat

the Soviet Navy.

Unlike the British army, which had trained on the central front to fight an orderly retreat to the

channel ports, the US and Royal Navies had practised a far more aggressive doctrine in the North

Atlantic, taking the fight to the Russians and searching out their nuclear submarines with the aim of

preventing them from breaking out into the Atlantic to threaten the reinforcement convoys which

were to flow from the eastern seaboard of America to Europe. The Cold War in the north Atlantic

was, therefore, a rather hotter affair than ashore, with routine interactions with all arms of the

soviet fleet. The effect of this was an extremely focused, highly trained, well drilled Royal Navy,

confident that the Soviet Union could be defeated at sea.

I spent parts of the 1980s serving within NATO's Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Strike Force, the UK

commanded specialist component and vanguard for the US Carrier Battle Groups. There were times

when we flew more hours per month than many front line aviators achieve now in a year. Compared

to the previous battles of the Atlantic, it was a fairly bloodless affair, but there were still casualties. It

was accepted that we would lose an aircraft a year from each of the front line ASW helicopter

squadrons in accidents caused by combinations of fatigue and error and while huge efforts went into

reducing the accident rate, there was, I think, a tacit acceptance that this was part of the price to be

paid.

So there was the most enormous sense of relief when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 - and also a

real sense that NATO had defeated a very demanding opponent, not least by pouring staggering

amounts of money into the battle. In that sense, the Cold War was no different from any other in

that economic attrition prevailed.

Such was the euphoria in some idealistic corners following the end of the Cold War, it was even

suggested that Russia could become part of NATO, I think that I would have counted myself amongst

that optimistic crowd, at least until 2000, when two separate realisations changed my mind. Both

occurred during my time in command of HMS WESTMINSTER, a Royal Navy Type 23 specialist anti-

submarine frigate.

The truth was, NATO navies were already fast losing their edge.

Since the mid-1980s, the superiority we had acquired in the ASW battle in the north Atlantic had

been almost wholly eroded. In part this was because of the corrosive effect of the 'peace dividend',

which manifested itself in a crippling decline in exercises and live operations.

Even more damaging, were the consequences of the American Walker Whitworth spy scandal.

By way of a brief refresher, the Walker Whitworth spy ring were an extended family group, serving

in the US Navy and privy to a wealth of specialist knowledge critical to NATO's technical superiority

in ASW matters, including detailed information about the US and UK noise reduction programmes

associated with our submarines and other information about our intelligence gathering and tracking

systems. (It is perhaps worth a brief digression at this point to consider the cumulative

consequences of US espionage catastrophes in the last 20 years: Walker Whitworth on the ASW

battle, Wikileaks and PFC Wiggins on the conduct of diplomatic relations and most recent, and

almost certainly even more damaging, Edward Snowden and his devastating disclosures on the

methods and activities of the NSA and its allies. These three US failures have probably done more to

damage the West's tactical superiority over a range of potential adversaries than any other events in

modern history. That's a truly sobering thought when one contemplates the arrogance of the USA in

its dealings with its loyal allies. But I digress.)

The effect of Walker Whitworth was that we almost completely lost our operational advantage, and

found ourselves operating against a Russian nuclear submarine force that, though much diminished

in size, had not succumbed to the lazy assumptions of a peace dividend. They'd kept practising.

Hard. They still regularly sortie submarines into the UKs waters, attempting to locate and then

harass Trident submarines operating in the approaches to the Clyde submarine base. These

incursions are deeply worrying and are difficult to counter, not least since the UK governments

catastrophic decision to scrap the RAFs Maritime Patrol Aircraft programme.

The second event was a visit to Klaipeda, in Lithuania, as part of a Partnership for Peace Deployment

into the Baltic. Lithuania - until only a few years previous a member of the USSR itself - was on track

for NATO membership and we were there to demonstrate NATO outreach to former Soviet

republics. In conversation with a senior Lithuanian naval officer I can remember asking him if it was

possible that NATO could expand eastwards. 'Never', was his emphatic response, 'Russia can never

be an ally.'

And so it came to pass. So much hope seems to have come to nothing. Today the West finds itself

contemplating a highly undesirable return to the earlier status quo with an aggressive Russia which

seems determined to de-stabilise relations with all and sundry. The reasons seem clear, as I outlined

in my last piece: Russia is on its knees, causing Putin to act, in the west's eyes, irrationally.

How, then, to respond?

Comprehensively. The West needs to develop a total strategy in order to ensure the peace. On the

economic front, probably the Wests most powerful set of tools, Russia needs to be contained. Of

course, much of Europe remains dependent on Russia for energy, but that can go both ways. This is

a very finely balanced requirement, but the West can control Russia economically through the

energy market. Europe must break its dependence on Russian energy in order to reset the strategic

balance of power in its favour. Then it can control demand, and therefore the price, of energy. The

aim should not be to produce Russian economic collapse- which would be quite as damaging and

dangerous. Instead, we should look to achieve a 'goldilocks' state, somewhere in between.

Diplomatically, Russia, if it could be persuaded to act collaboratively, could be a force for real good.

Russia's very different view of the world is crucially important as a permanent member of the

Security Council, not least as a check and balance on Western arrogant assumptions about liberal

democracy. Amongst the painful lessons of the last 20 years of Western interventions is that

sometimes, regrettably, horrible dictatorships appeared to be successful in suppressing or

containing indigenous extremism.

Militarily, the West, through NATO, needs to get serious. The current debate about the rightness of

2% as a proportion of GDP to spend on defence is thoroughly misleading. 2% is at best the eventual

steady state funding level, but equipment and armament and fuel stocks have been so depleted that

there first needs to be a significant programme of re-equipping, remembering that, in the end, wars

are won by the richest, but don't have to be fought to be won. It is the curious paradox of defence

spending that while all defence equipment is built in order for it to be destroyed, if it can be built

and used extremely well, it will act as a deterrent and never be used in anger.

Russian defence spending has doubled since 2007, rose by 18% last year and now accounts for over

20% of all public spending. Since 2010 a ten year, $720bn, defence modernisation programme has

been in execution and the results are beginning to be seen in new classes of submarine, diesel

electric and nuclear, and in surface combatants. The same is true for the equipment programmes for

the army and air forces.

There might be valuable lessons to learn from the 1920s, the last time the UK sought to extract a

'peace dividend'. As a result of the Treasury's 10 year rule, defence spending declined through the

1920s to 2.5% of GDP. The rush to re-arm starts in the mid-30s with defence spending rising,

belatedly, to 15% in 1939 and peaked at almost half GDP by 1944. It is at least worth considering

what might have happened if the UK had maintained an effective level of defence spending and

deterrence throughout the 20s and 30s, and whether that heightened expenditure might have acted

as a deterrent on Germany. So it seems to me that before determining the level of expenditure as a

percentage of GDP, one should debate the purpose of that expenditure, which is surely to prevent

future large scale conflict. One might call this 'spend to save.'

The threat of nuclear war, of course, makes this very different to the 1920s and 30s.

This new confrontation means different things to different countries. For the Baltic States and others

in Eastern Europe, the threat is of covert Russian intervention and conventional military force.

Almost without exception, these states at one stage amongst the worst hit in Europe by the

financial crisis - are increasing conventional military spending. Lithuania has reintroduced

conscription.

For the Western allies including the US and UK, it means keeping an assertive presence along NATOs

border with Russia. And it means having the military power to back that up in a crisis.

So, for the UK and US, that means replacing their submarine based system nuclear deterrents both

nearing retirement with others similar systems. They are clearly the most survivable and assured

nuclear weapons platform, and that it will therefore never have to be used. In our private lives we

insure ourselves with the intention of NOT to make claims against the policy. Only a fool would not

have the best insurance available to them and well equipped, trained and confident NATO forces are

exactly that insurance policy. Organisations like Greenpeace have produced alarmist figures in

support of their campaign against the deterrent, the most recent being, I think, a through life cost

(i.e. about 30 years) of the Trident Successor programme, of 97bn. The NHS budget for 2014/15

was about 113bn. The through life cost of the Typhoon fighter aircraft programme is said in some

quarters to be about 46bn. This cost results in an eventual aircraft fleet of 107, no more than a

couple of dozen of which are available for operations at any one time. Relative value for

money? Again, the cost of the UK campaign in Afghanistan was 37bn, plus hundreds of wasted

lives and thousands of crippled young men and women. For the cost of this campaign the UK could

build Trident's successor three times over (the MOD estimate for the build is 11-14bn.). Let's

hammer this nail out of sight. The apparent cost of HS2, a railway line designed to trim a few

minutes off the journey between Birmingham and London, is believed to be about 50bn.

Is it, therefore, that the fundamental question our politicians need to ask of themselves is, 'what

price peace?'