Who Will Defend Europe? An Awakened Russia and a Sleeping Continent

280 pages

Dr Kevin Rowlands

This book’s title poses a very good question. The timing couldn’t be better either. Who will defend Europe? Well, President Trump has very strident views about who shouldn’t defend Europe – the American taxpayer. The ‘freeloading’, according to him and many of his fellow countrymen and women, even those from a very different political tradition, has gone on for far too long. With the double-whammy of war on the European continent courtesy of an angry, adventurist Russia and a seemingly unstoppable US fixation with the threat of China, the answer to the question should be obvious. Keir Giles thinks it is. It’s our continent, it’s for us to defend.

Building on his previous work as a Russia specialist, Giles uses his new book to not simply give us a wake-up call, but to systematically beat us over the head with the alarm clock. He has some excellent points to make and he makes them in a blunt but convincing way. It is no secret that Putin wants Moscow to be the capital of a great power, but there is more to it than the ambitions of one autocrat. The idea of the ‘motherland’ is deep-rooted in the Russian psyche. Giles describes a children’s map that he found on his travels, one unrecognisable to today’s standard political projection. It shows the motherland to include all of the Slavic nations, the Baltic States, Finland, parts of Poland, and central Asia. Russia wants buffer states in its near abroad. Always has, always will. It’s ingrained in culture, history, and education.

Giles also reminds us of the old joke which, like all the best old jokes, only works because of an underlying truth. The only secure border, they say, is one with a Russian soldier standing on both sides of it.

So far, so familiar. We know the bear.

Who Will Defend Europe? walks the reader through the issues, how we got to where we are, and then tells us what to do about it. Giles writes that America is distracted and divided and that Britain’s role in the world is fading. For the UK lower defence spending, reducing numbers of military people, platforms and equipment, the paralysing bureaucracy within MOD, and ‘deceitful’ announcements from Ministry and Ministers alike have left us in dire straits. As an example of the deceit, he points to former Defence Secretary Grant Shapps’ ludicrous claim that the RAF now has greater lift capacity than at any time since the Second World War. The author clearly wants to scream.

He also rightly points out that British defence policy is predicated on the assumption that the UK would only go to war as part of a coalition led by the United States. That assumption is looking increasingly shaky. What if the US didn’t want to play anymore? He also notes another MOD false assumption, that if any given asset is twice as capable as its predecessor, we only need half as many.

However, the war in Ukraine, Giles argues, is an obvious demonstration of Russian intent.  It is buying us time, he says, but we are wasting it. Despite the evidence on our screens every day, we remain blissfully non-believing and unprepared. We can see that Russia is integrating new and old technology in its war machine – a ‘cyberpunk’ form of warfare – and that the threat of mass casualties is not a deterrent to Moscow or the Russian people as it would be to us. Plus (an interesting point), we seem to have simultaneously under-estimated and over-estimated the effectiveness of Russian forces. Yet we do little.

Readers of this review may now deduce that Keir Giles is something of a polemicist and they wouldn’t be wrong. He gives plenty of quotes in his book, some attributed and some anonymous, but they are all carefully selected. They are certainly not balanced. Some, such as those attributed to the Chief of the Defence Staff, are at times taken out of context or placed alongside others in such a way to make the reader question their validity. Messages meant to be of public reassurance (rightly or wrongly) are taken as indications of weakness or of being out of touch. Giles has opinions and they come across loud and clear in his books.

None of this is to say that the author is wrong and, indeed, he might be very right. However, like all who are absolutely certain of their own position he places very little credence on alternative perspectives. He is a Russia-specialist and he views the threat to Europe entirely through that lens. The UK, rightly or wrongly, still holds on to the belief that it is a global nation with a global role and despite the Government’s ‘NATO-first’ agenda is unlikely to withdraw completely from the rest of the world. Doubling down on the Russia threat, as Giles (and US hawks) would have us do whilst America concentrates on China is one possible future, but it isn’t the only one. There are other threats to our security which readers will be able to list according to their own experiences, viewpoints and (dare we whisper it) biases.

There are no simple solutions to complex problems and though we undoubtedly need to do more about Russia we should make absolutely certain about of place in the world, our ambitions, and our resources.  Sounds like time for a strategic defence review.