21 July 2016

The Other Side of the Hill

The new Cold War and an old problem with guesswork.

by Neil Tidmarsh

party 2 “All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don’t know from what you do; that’s what I call ‘guessing what was at the other side of the hill’.”

So said the Duke of Wellington in the nineteenth century. His words could have been the motto of the twentieth century’s Cold War warriors, as Nato tried to guess what the Warsaw Pact forces were up to on the other side of the Iron Curtain, and vice-versa. And those words are beginning to look just as apt in the twenty-first century’s new Cold War, with the post-Soviet window between Russia and the West becoming increasingly opaque, hung about with lace curtains, and echoing ominously with the clanking of old iron shutters.

A year ago, the news was full of reports that Russia was using military exercises along its western border to move troops into the Ukraine to reinforce the pro-Moscow rebels in Donetsk and Luhansk. Commentators used what they knew – a massive Russian military build-up along the border and in eastern Ukraine itself – to guess at what they didn’t know – an imminent new offensive in which Moscow would come to the aid of the separatists and even strike at Kiev itself. That offensive didn’t happen; clearly, this attempt to guess what was on the other side of the hill was wrong. Perhaps the build-up was itself just the result of another faulty attempt to guess what was on the other side of the hill, in the opposite direction; in this case, Moscow using what it knew – the West and Kiev forging an anti-Russian partnership – to make a faulty guess at what it didn’t know – that the West and Kiev were planning military hostilities against Russia.

The faulty guesswork continues.

Nato’s members in the Baltics are feeling understandably nervous; Russia has followed up its annexation of Crimea, and its support of Ukrainian separatists, with military and naval exercises in the Baltic region and with provocative flights by military aircraft through those states’ airspace. Russia’s Baltic fleet is undergoing a £1 billion overhaul, with 30 new ships due by 2020; and last week the defence ministry undertook a purge of the fleet by sacking at least 50 naval officers, including the fleet’s commander, Vice-Admiral Victor Kravchuck, and his chief of staff, Vice Admiral Sergei Popov (who, on this side of the hill, would care to guess what that was about?).

Nato’s response has been robust: last month, it undertook military exercises in the Baltic, its largest ever in the region; and at this month’s summit of Nato leaders in Warsaw (the first held in a former Warsaw pact country), it promised to deploy four multinational battalions (up to 4,000 troops) to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. This deployment is described as “persistent” or “enduring” rather than “permanent”, as Nato has a longstanding agreement with Moscow that it will not “permanently” deploy troops along its border with Russia. France, not a member of Nato, promised to send four Mirage 2000 planes to the Baltic in September. Nato is due to start exercises in Ukraine itself. At the summit, Nato also discussed its access to and presence in the Black Sea, which is almost a Russian lake (containing, as it does, the Crimea), but where the Nato states of Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania also have shorelines.

But has it been too robust? After all, faulty guesswork on the other side of the hill risks escalation and unintended consequences. Mikhail Gorbachev, of all people, has judged these moves by Nato to be preparations for an attack. They are “pushing the world towards war” he said to the Russian news agency Interfax. “They talk only about defence, while in fact preparing for offensive operations.” Most people on this side of the hill would believe this to be a misunderstanding; but it is nevertheless a dangerous misunderstanding, and the German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, understands that danger; he recently warned that Nato’s activities are inflaming tensions with Russia and could be seen as warmongering.

But perhaps we should be careful about trying to second-guess intentions on this side of the hill, let alone on the other. Two recent developments suggest that this robust response is already bearing fruit. The first came from President Putin himself: complaints about Nato expansionism were strangely absent from a policy speech he made earlier this month, and instead he described the West as Russia’s partner against terrorism. Perhaps his guesswork is not faulty at all; perhaps he realises that the manoeuvres on this side of the hill are designed to give him a choice; either ruin Russia in an arms race which it can’t afford, economically challenged as it already is, or swap confrontation for co-operation.

The second development suggests that this is indeed the case. This week the US secretary of state John Kerry flew to Moscow with an eight page plan for US-Russian military co-operation in the Middle East. He outlined the plan in meetings with President Putin and the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov; US forces could help Russia against Isis and the al-Qaeda linked Nusra front – with shared intelligence and “integrated operations” run from a joint staff command based in Jordan – in return for the Kremlin backing a wider peace deal.

If both parties are on the same side of the hill, then less time and energy will be wasted on dubious guesswork, and more can be spent on mutually-beneficial activities.

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