Tag Archive for: France

Civil society against terrorism

Image courtesy of Flickr user Bianca Dagheti

After the terror attacks in Paris last November—a carefully coordinated series of assaults carried out by multiple attackers, resulting in 130 deaths—there was intense pain and fear, but also a spirit of unity and resilience. By contrast, since the Bastille Day massacre in Nice—where an attacker, having received help from five men better described as criminals than as radical Islamists, barreled a truck into a crowd, killing 84 people, many of them children—the dominant feelings seem to be impotence and anger.

The French are now frustrated and anxious. They are used to some semblance of security in their cities, which have long been bastions of knowledge and art, not sites of relentless terror. They want to feel safe again—whatever it takes. These feelings are entirely understandable, but they don’t necessarily contribute to effective decision-making.

The ‘whatever it takes’ is the problem. If people feel that their leaders are failing to protect them, they may turn to more radical alternatives; already, populist and even overtly racist political parties are gaining traction in France and elsewhere. Urged on by such forces, people may even decide to take the law into their own hands.

But the authorities already have a lot on their plate. Trying to protect a population from terrorist attacks while upholding the rule of law is, after all, a very difficult task. Individuals, particularly those with mental disorders and a broad interest in violence, can become radicalized quickly, as occurred with the Nice attacker. They may not have committed any crimes, nor established actual ties to terrorist groups, before launching a major attack. Given this, the French authorities can provide no guarantee against further attacks.

This is not to say that the authorities should not be pushed to improve their prevention and response tactics. There is plenty that can and must be done to strengthen security in France and elsewhere. But the ultimatum that some French are now implicitly presenting—guarantee absolute security or watch us cast aside the rule of law and basic principles of openness and equality—does more harm than good.

The French, like all people, deserve to feel safe walking down the street, going out to dinner, enjoying a concert, celebrating a national holiday, and just living their lives. The question is how to restore that sense of security at a time when the risk of a terrorist attack cannot be fully eliminated.

The answer lies with civil society. Ordinary citizens should become more alert to the signs of radicalization, and more educated on how to respond. People should be encouraged to report the possible radicalization of those close to them to the relevant authorities, whether psychiatric professionals or the police.

The goal is not to revive McCarthyism, with people making unsubstantiated accusations against neighbors and friends. Rather, it is to create channels through which people who recognize radical or violent leanings in someone they know can report their concerns. Beyond giving law enforcement a chance to prevent a serious attack, such contributions from civil society could help to reinforce citizens’ willingness to leave anti-terror operations and policies to the authorities.

This model has worked for Israel. Despite regular exposure to terrorist attacks, Israelis retain a sense of relative security, owing partly to the ability of civil society to contribute to their own safety. As a result, citizens are willing to respect what Max Weber called the state’s ‘monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force.’

Of course, France is not on the verge of collapsing into chaos, with vigilantes attempting to take on the terrorists. But the relentless fear-mongering of populists, together with genuinely terrifying, tragic, and infuriating experiences, is undermining people’s better judgment, causing them to fall prey to inflammatory rhetoric. And with a presidential election set for next spring, there is strong incentive for self-serving politicians to use the victims of Nice as instruments of campaign strategy.

This cannot be allowed to happen. If the French ultimately succumb to fear, electing populist bigots, the struggling Islamic State (ISIS) will have scored a major victory—one that could potentially lead to a reversal of fortune for it.

And, make no mistake: despite what the populists say, ISIS is losing. Its territory is dwindling, taking with it the dream of a new caliphate spanning the Arab world. But ISIS does have a last-ditch strategy to prop itself up: rapid recruitment. And that effort would receive a major boost from further intensification of anti-Muslim rhetoric or, worse, the election of those who would turn rhetoric into policy.

Already, ISIS recruiters are achieving success, even as the group loses control of cities and provinces in Syria and Iraq. From Orlando to Istanbul to Dhaka, ISIS has found plenty of supporters who are eager to kill in its name. Most recently, two ISIS-affiliated suicide bombers blew up a peaceful demonstration in Kabul, killing 80 and injuring more than 200.

But as long as the ‘enemy’ in the West remains united and principled, ISIS cannot emerge victorious. For France and others, the key is collective action, both at home and abroad, which will require improved links between internal and external security agencies, together with greater risk awareness within civil society, along Israeli lines. Add to that continued strikes against ISIS sanctuaries, and the dream of the caliphate will soon be dead.

It’s bad enough that terrorists want to take our lives; the last thing we need is populists taking our souls. Regaining control over our lives and our destinies means being realistic. Instead of demanding a return to a time before terrorism, we must become more alert to the risks it poses—not only to our safety, but also to our values and commitment to the rule of law—and do our part to minimize them.

The Battle of Pozières Ridge, 23 July–3 September 1916

Image courtesy of the Australian War Memorial

On 23 July 1916 the 1st Australian Division launched an operation that began Australia’s contribution to the great British offensive of that year, the Battle of the Somme. On that day, some three weeks after the Somme offensive began, the 1st Australian Division attacked the French village of Pozières. Two days later the entire village was in their hands.

Over the next six weeks, the three divisions of 1st Anzac Corps, the 1st, 2nd and 4th Australian Divisions battled their way along the high ground, securing the menacing OG Lines to the north-east of the village, and inching towards the fortified German strongpoint at Mouquet Farm. In the process, the Australians suffered some 23,000 casualties.

The most successful phase of the Battle of Pozières Ridge was its first. On 23 July 1916, the 1st Division of 1st Anzac Corps advanced under the cover of a lifting artillery barrage from a trench some 1500 yards to the south east of Pozières, to the south side of the Albert-Bapaume Road. Vicious hand-to-hand fighting ensured the capture of German strong posts in the houses, cellars and yards along the south-east edge of the village and Gibraltar, a significant strong point at the south-western edge of the village itself. Over the next two days, the Division was able to push through the main part of the village, which lay to the north-east of the road, and extensive fortifications to take possession of the entire village.

This first attack, while successful, failed to deal with the major German defences in the Pozières sector—the OG Lines. These heavily-defended trench lines were part of the German second line of defence on the Somme, and ran more or less parallel to the direction of the operation, that is, from the south-east to the north-west. When the 1st Division was relieved by the 2nd on 27 July 1916, the capture of the OG Lines became the highest priority. The 2nd Division took two attempts to capture these lines, struggling to make headway against uncut barbed-wire defences and German defenders who were well aware of the coming attack and well-armed with machine guns. It wasn’t until the second attack on 4 August that the division successfully captured the lines and secured the right flank of the Australian operations.

From this point on, the OG Lines were held more or less in a defensive capacity only, and the main focus of operations shifted to the north-west. The overall plan in the sector was to capture the ridge which swept away towards the village of Thiepval. The 4th Division, on its arrival to the line on 7 August 1916, began a complicated series of operations that inched the line towards Mouquet Farm, the major German defensive work between Pozières and Thiepval. Each of these operations was conducted on a small front with smaller objectives and achieved a slight modicum of success in advancing the line, but at a high cost in men and materiel. On its relief some nine days later, the 4th Division had advanced the line to within 600 yards of Mouquet Farm.

Each of the three Australian divisions returned to the front line once more before the 1st Anzac Corps was replaced in the line by the Canadian Corps. Even Charles Bean, with his determination to put as much detail into his Official History as possible, had to preface his chapters on what happened next with the statement ‘the series of battles which ensued, repeating as they did within a narrower area [than] most of the horrors of the Pozières fighting, cannot be described with the minuteness hitherto employed’. The Australians never managed to capture Mouquet Farm, and in fact only directly assaulted the position twice. Their attacks slowly petered out before all three divisions were sent to Belgium to recover.

Although the Battle of the Somme is largely remembered for its major operations—1 July, 14 July, 15 September—the other 138 days comprised of small-scale, disjointed attacks just like those conducted by 1st Anzac Corps along Pozières Ridge. These operations were too often so rushed, disjointed and badly integrated with firepower that on most occasions they didn’t stand a decent chance of success. In too many cases the objective didn’t matter to the success of the overall campaign, instead attacks were launched on little more than the next trench, the next strongpoint, the next machine gun. Men struggled towards ill-defined objectives on a moonscape battlefield under an interminable hail of artillery shells and machine gun fire. In 1916, this was the war the infantry knew.

Mouquet Farm was not captured until 26 September 1916, long after it had been outflanked. On that day the 6th East Yorkshire Pioneer Battalion was working in the vicinity of the farm digging communication trenches. After a bomb fight lasting four hours, the small garrison of around 35 Germans gave themselves up. If Pozières Ridge was part of the battle that had to happen on the way to success, it was a costly path indeed.

Fromelles: an Australian tragedy

Image courtesy of Flickr user Bruno Parmentier

The Australian Imperial Force (AIF) proved fortunate in being spared the first day of fighting on 1 July, 1916 as the British Army attacked the Somme in northern France. That first day of the Somme offensive cost the British more than 57,000 casualties, including 19,240 dead.

Having arrived in France from Egypt in March, Australian troops of I ANZAC Corps were occupying positions in the relatively quiet ‘nursery’ sector near the town of Armentières on the Franco-Belgian border.

There they were busy learning the rigours and routine of trench warfare in their new operational theatre. They conducted fighting patrols in no man’s land, and carried out a program of aggressive trench raids against the enemy’s positions to kill and capture as many Germans as possible and collect intelligence on their operations. The British Army referred to these as ‘minor operations’, but trench raids served to weld a disparate array of combat arms into an effective fighting force before they went into battle for the first time.

In early July I ANZAC moved south, where it was drawn into the fighting on the Somme. Australian troops of the 1st Division assaulted the fortified village of Pozières on the night of 22-23 July, capturing a significant position in the Somme battlefield.

But the first major operation by the Australians on the Western Front had taken place in the ‘nursery’ sector in French Flanders only four days earlier, when troops of the newly-raised AIF 5th Division were loaned to the British IX Corps for a diversionary assault on German positions near the village of Fromelles. The battalions of the 5th Division had been in France for just two weeks. Falling under the command of General Sir Richard Haking, the 5th Division and the neighbouring British 61st Division received orders to capture a series of German positions near Fromelles. The aim was to pin down the Germans in the north and prevent their reserves from being transferred to the Somme. Zero hour was fixed for 6pm on 19 July 1916.

The assault that followed possessed all the hallmarks of the tragic first day for the British Army’s offensive on the Somme less than three weeks earlier. A concentrated bombardment did little to suppress the German defences; machine-gun positions remained active and inflicted a heavy toll as soon as the assaulting waves ‘hopped the bags’ to cross no man’s land.

Troops of the 15th Brigade were annihilated by machine-guns from a fortified salient known as the Sugar Loaf as they crossed the 300 metres of flat, featureless terrain. The German guns poured devastating fire down the length of the 5th Division’s front that ripped into the fight flank of the assaulting waves. One soldier described how ‘the bullets skimmed low, from knee to groin, riddling the tumbling bodies before they touched the ground’.

Troops of the 8th and 14th Brigades were successful in capturing the second line of enemy defences, penetrating deep into German-occupied territory. But devoid of flanking support, and struggling to repel fierce and repeated counter-attacks throughout the night, they too suffered heavily and were forced to withdraw early the following morning. Surrounded by the enemy and with little remaining ammunition with which to defend their positions, many had no other option but surrender.

In less than 24 hours, IX Corps had suffered over 7,000 casualties. A total of 5,500 of these were Australians, including 1,917 dead, 3,136 wounded and 470 taken prisoner. The British lost 1,500 casualties and the Germans 2,000. German intelligence officers searched a captured Australian and discovered orders in his pocket that revealed the purpose of the operation as nothing other than a feint.

Australian and British dead lay out in no man’s land until the end of the war, by which time none could be identified. Some 410 of them were buried in two large communal graves at VC Corner Cemetery, both marked by a large stone crucifix laid flat on the ground near where they died. Those killed in the German trenches were buried in a mass grave behind German lines that went undiscovered by war graves registration units in the years after the war.

The grave was finally located in 2009 and the bodies of 250 British and Australian soldiers killed on 19-20 July 1916 were recovered. Many were identified through a combination of anthropological, archaeological, historical and DNA techniques, and were reinterred at the new Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Cemetery. This significant discovery proved that the ripples of that tragic action were still being felt nearly a centenary on. Descendants of missing men now buried with their names on freshly carved headstones spoke of finding ‘closure’ for trauma that had haunted their families for generations.

For Australians, Fromelles was a tragic introduction to warfare on the Western Front and hideously foreshadowed the price their nation would bear in contributing to Germany’s defeat. Hit with an additional 23,000 casualties in bitter fighting at Pozières and Mouquet Farm on the Somme, the AIF lost more men in eight weeks in France than in eight months on Gallipoli.

Tragic and costly though these losses were, they were not in vain, for the British Empire’s victory over Germany wasn’t going to occur by holding trenches for the duration of the war. For the Australians, Fromelles marked the beginning of three more years of hard fighting and rigorous training that allowed the AIF to develop into an effective fighting force that played a prominent role in Germany’s defeat in 1918.

Fromelles was one of the darkest days in Australian history, but it lay on the long and bloody road to victory on the Western Front.

Remembering the Battle of the Somme

Image courtesy of Flickr user Taylor S-K

The recent commemoration ceremonies in Britain and France on 1 July marked the 100th anniversary of the worst military disaster in British history. On that day in 1916, a large force of 13 British divisions and 5 French divisions launched a combined assault against fortified German trenches in the Somme region of France. From early morning, waves of British troops left their trenches and advanced across no man’s land, in many places directly into heavy German machine-gun fire. By the day’s end, the British had suffered over 57,000 casualties, including almost 20,000 dead, all for little measurable gain. The shock of this tragic loss is still felt today; the causes of the disaster and those accountable continue to be debated.

The British commander-in-chief General Sir Douglas Haig generally receives most of the opprobrium. Haig had conceived the plan for a large-scale attack by British and French forces across a wide front to capture the German trench system and breach the defences which had long deadlocked the trench warfare on the Western Front into a stalemate. But from February, when the French came under increasing pressure from a relentless German attack on the fortress city of Verdun, the main responsibility for the Somme offensive shifted to the British. The attack proceeded, but with fewer troops and hasty preparation. These deficiencies were compounded by failures of weapons systems, tactics, and intelligence about the state of the enemy.

The infantry attack on 1 July was preceded by a week-long artillery bombardment in which the British guns fired 1.5 million shells onto the German trench systems and their defences. This deluge of shrapnel and high explosive was intended to inflict carnage, destroy the German trenches and bury their occupants; it was also confidently assumed the shells would destroy the German barbed wire obstacles in front of their trenches. The artillery failed in all of these aims. The German trench systems contained deep, secure dugouts which provided safe shelter from most of the artillery rounds, many of which were duds and failed to explode while others were the wrong type of projectile and inadequate for the task. And the barbed wire remained largely uncut.

At 7.30 am, ‘Zero Hour’, on 1 July the British infantry soldiers, heavily laden with up to 60 pounds of equipment, went ‘over the top’ to advance steadily towards the enemy lines. They were to follow a ‘creeping barrage’ of artillery fire that would screen them from German retaliatory fire but in most places the barrage moved ahead of them too quickly, offering no protection and allowing the German defenders to clamber up from their deep dugouts to what remained of the parapets of their trenches.

The battle quickly became a ‘race for the parapet’ in which the British soldiers had to cross hundreds of metres of no man’s land, cratered with shell holes and littered with the snares of uncut barbed wire—while the German soldiers had to scale their dugout steps, mount and assemble their machine-guns and prepare their fields of fire. It was a race the Germans were mostly bound to win.

However, the popular image of British soldiers, many of them inexperienced volunteers of the newly-raised Kitchener armies, being mown down as they advanced stolidly into fire, distorts the reality. In many parts of the German front line, the British succeeded in entering and seizing the trenches after fierce, close-quarters fighting with bayonets and grenades. The day would end though in a British withdrawal and demoralisation amongst the troops. In England, the public would be shocked at the arrival of thousands of wounded and the lengthening weekly casualty lists published by the government and in national newspapers, a practice that was only stopped in late 1916.

This was just the first day of a battle that lasted for 141 days. Over the following four months the Somme became a gruelling campaign that drew in some 55 infantry divisions to fight across a front of almost 30 kilometres. Three weeks after the campaign began, Australian divisions also began to join the battle, fighting their way along Pozières Ridge in a relentless ordeal that lasted six weeks. Nearly 7,000 Australian soldiers lost their lives during the battle of the Somme. Australia’s allies suffered tens of thousands more. As winter approached and the inconclusive battle finally drew to a close, the allied front line had been advanced no more than 12 kilometres at the cost of some 1.2 million casualties on both sides.

But the war would go on. This first battle of the Somme was the midpoint in a war that would finally end with the allied victory over two years later in November 1918. And the carnage on the Somme would continue again before that victory came.

Many families throughout the United Kingdom still recall, down the generations, the memories of those who died or were reported missing on the Somme. On 1 July, thousands participated in church vigils and commemorative ceremonies across Britain and descendants attended a major ceremony at the Thiepval Memorial in France which bears the names of more than 72,000 servicemen who have no known graves.

Reconciling with Sykes-Picot

Image courtesy of Pixabay user ErikaWittlieb

This month marks the centenary of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the secret British-French accord that launched a decade-long series of adjustments to the borders of the post-Ottoman Middle East. Most commentary on the anniversary has been negative, suggesting that the agreement bears considerable blame for the frequency and durability of the region’s conflicts.

That interpretation, however, borders on caricature. Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot aimed to devise a plan that would enable Great Britain and France to avoid a ruinous rivalry in the Middle East. They largely succeeded: Their design kept the region from coming between the two European powers, and it managed to survive for a century.

To be sure, many of the Sykes-Picot borders reflected deals cut in Europe rather than local demographic or historical realities. But that hardly makes the Middle East unique: Most borders around the world owe their legacy less to thoughtful design or popular choice than to some mixture of violence, ambition, geography, and chance.

The unpleasant reality is that today’s Middle East is what it is because its people and leaders have done such a bad job in shaping it. Sykes and Picot cannot be blamed for the region’s pervasive lack of tolerance and political freedom, poor schools, or the unfair ways in which girls and women are treated. Other parts of the world (including those without enormous reserves of oil and gas) have emerged from colonialism in much better shape.

The factors accounting for the record of failure in the Middle East—history, culture, religion, and personalities—are worthy of serious examination. But the more pressing question that this anniversary raises has less to do with historical analysis than it does with current policy.

In much of the Middle East, a violent struggle for mastery is the new normal. In four—arguably five—countries in the region, the government does not control significant portions of the state’s territory. Lebanon has been in this condition for decades, Iraq for more than a decade, and Syria, Libya, and Yemen for some five years now. Militias, terrorist organizations, foreign fighters, and other armed groups have asserted varying degrees of local authority.

There are also the unfulfilled national aspirations of the Kurds (large numbers of whom live in Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran) and the unresolved matter of how to reconcile the reality of Israel with the Palestinians’ political goals. The border between Syria and Iraq is for all intents and purposes gone. Millions of men, women, and children find themselves living in a country that is not their own.

What, then, should be done? One option would be to try to preserve—or, more accurately, restore—the Sykes-Picot Middle East. But attempting to reunify the countries that appear on the map—and to make the borders between them matter—would be folly. These countries will not go back to what they were; ties to region, religion, tribe, ethnicity, and/or ideology have in many cases superseded national identities.

A second option would be to try to negotiate the terms of a new Middle East, a successor to Sykes-Picot. This, too, would prove to be an expensive failure. Redrawing the map might be possible one day, but that day is decades away, at best. There is simply no consensus on what the map should look like, and no party or alliance that could impose or uphold it. As a rule of thumb, diplomacy can be expected only to work with facts on the ground, not to create them, and the facts on the ground stand in the way of a regional settlement.

All of this leads to a third option: Acceptance of the fact that for the foreseeable future the Middle East will not resemble what appears on maps and globes. This is not an argument for remaining aloof; as bad as things are, they can always get worse. To see that they do not, governments and organizations that meet certain standards can and should be strengthened; those that do not can and should be weakened.

But no level of effort will alter the region’s basic reality: borders that count for little and governments that count for only a little more. Syria, Iraq, and Libya are likely to be countries in name only; important parts of each will essentially be autonomous and on their own, for better or worse. The fact that Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Russia, and the United States are working at cross-purposes more often than not further suggests a messy future without legal foundation.

In some ways, the pre-Sykes-Picot Middle East is coming back—but without the order imposed by the Ottoman Empire. As a result, the Middle East stands to suffer far worse in the next century than it did in the last—a reality that could well leave us nostalgic for the times of Sykes and Picot.

Sykes-Picot at 100 (part 2)


Before toppling Saddam Hussein in 2003, much of the west backed the Iraqi dictator during the 1980–88 war against Iran. Iraq’s Shia majority fought against their coreligionists in the Shia Islamic Republic during that war. Things started to change after the first Gulf War in 1990–91, in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. In its messy aftermath, the west encouraged Shia and Kurds to rise against Saddam, and then left them to their bloody fate. Scroll forward to 2003 and it’s unsurprising that Iraqi Shia came to place more faith in Iran than the west, and still do.

What’s happening now is a lot more than can be reasonably blamed on Sykes-Picot.

First came Lebanon, torn apart in its 1975–90 civil war whose main (if constantly shifting) battlelines were between Muslim and Christian. That was in part because of France’s 1920s move to enlarge Mount Lebanon, mainly Christian and Druze, into a Greater Lebanon which bolted on big Sunni and Shia populations. Later, within its Syria mandate from the interwar League of Nations, it tried to re-engineer Syria into a Millet-style, divide-and-rule division, including enclaves for the Druze and Alawites.

But what had been a Sunni-Shia subplot in the drama—going back to the 7th century schism in Islam—burst onto centre stage after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. It was that, and not Sykes-Picot, which catapulted the Shia minority (a majority in Iraq) to power in an Arab heartland country for the first time since Saladin ended the heterodox Shia Fatimid dynasty in 1171.

That tilted the regional balance of power towards Iran: Shia, Persian and with ambitions as regional hegemon to rival Saudi Arabia as well as Israel—traditionally the two pillars of US strategy in the Middle East.

Since 2003, the overarching conflict has pitted Sunni against Shia, fuelled across the region by the inter-state rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Iran has forged a Shia axis from Baghdad to Beirut, and down into the Gulf, while Saudi Arabia and its Sunni allies, angered by US ineptitude in Iraq and reluctance to support the mainly Sunni insurgency against Bashar al-Assad in Syria, have helped contribute to the Sunni jihadism that has stepped into the vacuum.

ISIS, which competes with the Wahhabist Saudis as to who is the most implacably bigoted hammer of the Shia both condemn as heretical rafidah or rejectionists, has fanned the embers of the Sunni–Shia stand-off into border-busting, millennarian flame.

The intensity of the violence, Iraq’s and Syria’s loss of any sense of national narrative, and the collapse institutions that offer citizens a common platform, have stampeded millions into what security they can find amid sect, tribe and militia. Power is now very often local in countries partitioned by warlords, through whom even powerful external actors like the US and Russia have to operate.

When the fighting stops, and the jihadistan of ISIS is dismantled, a return to the iron centralism of the past is most unlikely. As I have argued elsewhere, some form of federalism, with securely devolved power and a loose national compact, offers probably the only way forward. The trick will be to find ways of institutionalising and broadening local power away from the warlords, making it mutually acceptable and recognisable across diverse groups, through such things as local policing to a fair share-out of national resources.

The larger Levantine canvas designed by European imperialists a century ago will probably not see any clean breaks. If some form of confederal consensus eventually emerges from the fractured chaos of the present, there will be a re-articulation of national space into more homogeneous fragments, and soft borders for, for example, the Sunni of west Iraq and east Syria, and the Kurds of the north of both countries, who for practical purposes already govern themselves.

There are no regional models for this. Lebanon, not a model anyone would emulate, was shattered into relatively homogeneous bits by the war and now limps along in the penumbra of warlords in suits. But despite 22 years of Israeli occupation ending in 2000, and 29 years of Syrian occupation that ended in 2005, the external borders have not moved one millimetre. Syria and Iraq might turn out differently.

When so many threads in such interwoven societies are pulled so hard at the same time, do they unravel or re-tangle? When Edmund Burke spoke of ‘the little platoon we belong to’ as the ‘first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country’, he was reflecting on the French Revolution, relatively uncomplicated in comparison to the Levant and Mesopotamia—before or after Sykes-Picot.

Sykes-Picot at 100 (part 1)

Image courtesy of Flickr user Paola Porsia

This month’s 100th anniversary of the Sykes-Picot agreement, the secret Anglo-French pact during World War I to carve French and British spheres of influence out of the then Ottoman territories of Greater Syria and Mesopotamia, has become a sort of historical I-told-you-so exercise.

The essential thesis is that a European imperial attempt to force antagonistic religious sects and ethnic groups into Europe-style nation-states was never going to work, as the crack-up of Iraq and Syria conclusively proves. Yet it’s not obvious that alternatives imaginable at the time would have been more successful.

But it’s worth examining to what extent Sykes-Picot, a perfidious stitch-up even by the squalid standards of the day, bears responsibility for failure to turn the near east lands of Greater Syria and Mesopotamia into thriving states and societies.

An often forgotten aspect of Sykes-Picot is that its intent was to constrain Anglo-French rivalry in the Levant that might have undermined the war-time alliance against Germany. Thus the region was reconfigured for the convenience of Europe’s eastern empires rather than the future cohesion of organically formed nation-states.

It’s now become almost a cliché to suggest that the break-up of Syria by the five year-old civil war, and the fracturing of Iraq after the US-led invasion of 2003, has shattered these imperially designed states into their original ethno-sectarian fragments. Even the jihadis of ISIS, after declaring their cross-border caliphate in eastern Syria and western Iraq in 2014, claimed they had “broken Sykes-Picot”.

Looking at the way the Levant has cracked into hardened fragments, divided between Sunni and Shia, Kurd or Alawite, and at how state institutions have collapsed and uncovered the hard-wiring of affiliation by sect, clan, tribe and militia, it’s hard not to see a violent reassertion of the Millet—the system of Ottoman administrative units that gave subject peoples a measure of autonomy and ethno-religious cohesion. Yet a fuller picture might look at what came before Sykes-Picot as well as what came after. The pact isn’t the sole cause of later failure—it’s maybe not even the primary cause.

To start with, the Ottoman practice of top-down autonomy based on religion built boundaries against a larger identity, restricting the idea of Ottoman citizenship to a tiny elite, in any event disabused of it by the emphatic Turkic turn in the final stages of the empire under the so-called Young Turks. That shaped the Arab future at least as much as Sykes-Picot (which in any case was not implemented as planned). So, more than arguably, did the Ottoman embrace of western military techniques but ban on the Arabic printing press, which continued (with exceptions) well into the 19th century.

The European carve-up of post-Ottoman Arab territories into heterogeneous nation-states exacerbated this legacy, and the hollow promises of pan-Arab nationalism, masking the will to power of army-based local elites, signally failed to ameliorate it. But imperial interference in the natural evolution of constitutional politics—as the British did in Egypt and Iraq and the French in Syria—probably did more to twist the future of the Arab peoples than Sykes-Picot. And that was compounded thereafter by the now US-dominated west’s fatal attraction to regional strongmen as bulwarks against communism and then Islamism, and a string of misfired interventions, from the coup against a nationalist government in Iran in 1953 to the Iraq invasion of 2003.

Little of this can be laid directly at the door of Sykes-Picot. Iran and Egypt, for example, evolved into nation-states from a state tradition established millennia before the fashion reached Europe. Nor is the case of Iraq as clear cut as it might now seem.

Part two will examine more recent developments against the backdrop of the breakup of the Ottoman territories in the Levant a century ago.

The ‘Contract of the Century’: France reacts to the Australian submarine deal

The announcement that French defence contractor DCNS had been selected as Australia’s international partner to build RAN’s new fleet of 12 submarines was big news in Australia. That’s understandable considering the multi-billion dollar, decades-long contract. It was also big news in France. Combing through a range of French media outlets reveals several interesting trends.

First, domestic politics is the focal point of French reporting. DCNS’s victory has been trumpeted by the government as a massive success for France and its defence industry. L’Elysée, the office of French President François Hollande, called the decision ‘historic’ (‘historique’), and thanked Australia for its confidence in France and its companies. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls took to Twitter to describe the contract as a ‘magnificent success for DCNS and our industry’ (‘magnifique succès pour DCNS et notre industrie’). In a radio interview for Europe1, French Minister of Defence Jean-Yves Le Drian struck a similar tone, stating that the contract would create ‘thousands of jobs in France’ (‘milliers d’emplois en France’).

Ministerial-level politicians aren’t the only ones who are excited. Politicians in lower ranks from west and northwestern France, where DCNS has a large presence, were also quite happy with Tuesday’s announcement. The former deputy-mayor of Cherbourg, home of DCNS’ primary shipbuilding facility, called the deal ‘a victory for France and for Cherbourg’ (‘une victoire pour la France et pour Cherbourg’).

The reaction of the French media has also been positive. Le Figaro, one of France’s most prominent newspapers, called the deal a ‘mega-contract’ (‘méga-contrat’). L’Express, another large newspaper, called the deal the ‘contract of the century’ (‘contrat du siècle’) for the French arms industry. Even the usually pacifist and left-leaning paper Libération appears to be relatively receptive to the deal, as it bucks the recent trend of France selling arms to authoritarian states like Egypt and Qatar.

DCNS’s triumph is the latest (and biggest) in a string of international deals struck by various French arms manufacturers (many of whom are at least partially owned by the French state). Last month, French aircraft manufacturer Dassault agreed to sell 24 Rafale fighter jets—plus missiles, maintenance, and training—to Qatar in a deal worth €6.7 billion (approximately AU$10 billion). In 2015, Egypt was the main recipient of French arms. It bought 24 Rafales for approximately €5 billion (AU$7.4 billion), a FREMM frigate, and is still engaged in talks for more purchases. However, the big coup for Egypt was its acquisition of two French Mistral amphibious assault ships in 2014, after the French government cancelled the contract with the vessels’ original buyer, Russia, following outcry over the country’s role in the conflict in Eastern Ukraine.

As in Australia, there has been much focus on the economic aspects of the deal in France. Le Monde is reporting that the deal will inject €8 billion (AU$12 billion) into the French economy and will ‘mobilize approximately 4,000 workers at DCNS and 200 subcontractors over six years in France’ (‘En France, 4,000 personnes seront mobilisées pendant six ans chez DCNS et ses deux cents sous-traitants’). However, it’s unclear where those figures come from or what’s meant exactly by ‘mobilize’—it could refer to the creation of new jobs or to simply tasking current employees onto the new project.

There’s also been a distinct emphasis on how the deal advances the Australia–France ‘strategic partnership’. In his communiqué, President Hollande called the deal a ‘decisive step forward in the strategic partnership between the two countries’ (‘Il marque une avancée decisive dans le partenariat stratégique entre les deux pays…’). The 2016 Australian Defence White Paper emphasises Australia’s close defence relationship with France—both in the Pacific and globally (see 5.83 and 5.84)—but nowhere does the phrase ‘strategic partnership’ appear alongside France. Whether this proclaimed ‘strategic partnership’ evolves beyond France simply selling military equipment to Australia and into more cooperation on issues like terrorism and South Pacific security remains to be seen.

Australia has had a turbulent history with French-sourced equipment. The RAAF flew Dassault Mirage IIIs from 1963 until 1988, although design limitations hampered their operational utility. More troublesome was the acquisition of the MRH-90 multi-role helicopter, which has only recently started to come into its own after many years of issues. Finally, the Eurocopter Tiger has been plagued by problems since its introduction, and is due for early replacement in the 2020s. So the DCNS submarine deal doesn’t have many shining examples to follow.

Submarines have seen the emotional and historical links between the two countries played up. Minister of Defence Le Drian tweeted that he had spent Anzac Day in the Somme with Governor-General Peter Cosgrove to commemorate the Australians who died there during World War I. The Governor-General then went on to meet President Hollande at L’Elysée for a lavish state dinner on the day of the announcement. While the timing may simply be a coincidence (his visit was planned well before the announcement was scheduled), it’s interesting nonetheless.

The French government went all out in support of the DCNS bid, and now it’s basking in its success. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has even jumped on a plane for an unscheduled visit to talk details with Malcolm Turnbull and the DCNS team. While the French media outlets offered loud support for DCNS’s success in the CEP, they were much quieter on the challenges that lay ahead as the submarines are designed and delivered over the coming decades. As we all know, that’ll be the real story.

Couples counselling: Japan and Australia after SEA1000

Back in February 2015, Prime Minister Tony Abbott was gearing up to gift the contract to build Australia’s future submarines to the Government of Japan. The press release had been drafted and the announcement was imminent. Fearing an electoral wipeout if the submarine work went offshore, South Australian backbenchers compelled the prime minister to declare a Competitive Evaluation Process to assess tenders from France, Germany and Japan. Agreeing to the CEP had allowed Tony Abbott to stare down a party room spill motion the week earlier. The process was mired in politics from day one.

Despite the political pressures, the Abbott government had seen the future, and it was Japan. The government’s public advocacy for Option J was taken seriously in Tokyo. The Government of Japan came to the party on domestic politics and strategic factors, pledging palatable workshare arrangements and the transfer of highly sensitive technology to Australia. Tokyo’s expectations were sky high, egged on by Prime Minister Abbott and buttressed by his tight relationship with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The former PM’s comments are still seen by some Japanese to be ‘a matter of honour’. Tony Abbott has a lot to answer for.

Yesterday’s announcement that France will be Australia’s international design partner for the future submarines would have come as a serious disappointment to Japan’s defence industry and political establishment. It was reported last week that the Japanese were ‘beside themselves with angst’ after receiving news their bid was on the ropes, and that losing out on SEA1000 would be a ‘disaster for them, because they will lose face.’ Tokyo’s bid was a high-profile, “Japan-Inc” effort focused on strategic imperatives. Yet it didn’t display the hallmarks of a well-thought-out roadmap designed to win the confidence of Australian decision-makers and opinion leaders.

For Japan, cooperation on submarines was to be the cornerstone of a deeper special strategic partnership with Australia. So we should expect the CEP outcome to dampen the energy and enthusiasm that’s driven the bilateral relationship for much of the past two and a half years. But Japan’s loss to France’s DCNS won’t compel Tokyo to reconsider its blooming defence and security relationship with Australia, nor should it. It’s imperative that Canberra now works diligently to ensure that our bilateral relationship doesn’t cool down too much or for too long.

The Abe administration has invested considerable political capital in efforts to modernise and normalise Japan’s international posture through various foreign and defence policy initiatives and reforms. Article 9 of Japan’s constitution was reinterpreted; record defence expenditure was approved; new defence guidelines enmeshed Japan deeper in its alliance with the US; and the ‘Three Principles’ policy was put in place, overturning a half-century prohibition on defence exports. SEA1000 provided a foreign proving ground at which to test the Three Principles; it was a high-profile opportunity to engage Japan’s defence industries on their maiden large-scale arms export agreement.

While Japan’s quest for a more normal posture highlights its success in overcoming its post-war political culture (as Sam Roggeveen noted last week), the CEP outcome betrays Japan’s failure to quickly build a functional corporate culture around defence exports. The Japanese government and defence businesses were always going to be behind the eight ball when up against experienced arms exporters like DCNS and thyssenkrupp. In the end, a lack of experience saddled their bid with ‘considerable risk’.

DFAT describes Australia’s relationship with Japan as ‘our closest and most mature in Asia’. Canberra’s bipartisan strategic commitment to Tokyo runs deep, and there’s a great deal of goodwill in the relationship. It’s in Australia’s interests that Japan is strong, capable and engaged. A more ‘normal’ Japan that can proactively shape and sustain the regional and global order is crucial to Australia.

On the back of Tokyo’s failed CEP bid, we should be thinking about how Canberra can minimise the harm done and further support Japan’s normalisation. SEA1000 has no doubt helped the Japanese to understand the dynamics of Australian defence acquisition processes. We should encourage the Government of Japan and its partners like Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to bid for defence projects on the cards in Australia and in other like-minded countries. Doing so will allow Japan to develop a corporate culture around defence exports. High-speed rail provides another opportunity to familiarise Japanese corporates with Australia’s business culture. We should look to deepen maritime engagement through the Trilateral Strategic Dialogue, as Andrew Shearer recently advocated in a paper for CSIS. We should also heed Tokyo’s pivot to Southeast Asia, and look for opportunities to support regional capacity building and exercises with the JSDF.

As the Prime Minister noted yesterday, the partnership between Australia and Japan ‘gets stronger day by day’. Indeed, it’s been on the up for well over a decade. Turnbull might not be able to rely on a personal rapport with Abe (as Abbott could), but he can certainly count on an alignment of values, interests and concerns.

While Abbott stoked unrealistic expectations in Japan, Tokyo’s enthusiasm wasn’t curbed when a new political reality emerged upon Turnbull’s elevation. It now seems that Turnbull, too, could have done more to manage Tokyo’s expectations, either when he came to the prime ministership six months ago, or indeed once it was patently clear that Japan was out of the race.

But that’s all in the past. What’s important now is that we soothe sensitivities in Tokyo, continue to offer our unalloyed support for Japan’s normalisation, and double-down on efforts to deepen and broaden our crucial strategic partnership.

Designing the Shortfin Barracuda Block 1A

Editor’s note: The Strategist has invited all three SEA 1000 contenders to explain their approach to meeting Australia’s future submarine requirement.

A common misunderstanding about the conventionally powered Shortfin Barracuda Block 1A is that is somehow “converted” from the nuclear powered French Barracuda. This characterisation is inaccurate. In fact the conventional ship uses the nuclear ship as its design reference.

As a new design for Australia’s specific requirement, the first design activity DCNS conducted was to size the ship. Based on what Australia needs the submarine to do, a calculation is performed to determine the necessary volume and weight required – how much submarine do we need? The answer to this question is found using specific programs within DCNS, and displacement is determined.

From this volume the naval architect then asks the next question – does an existing design approach the estimated displacement? If the answer is ‘yes’, this existing design becomes the reference for the new ship. If the answer is ‘no’, then a completely new design is required. In this situation one design loop will be insufficient and the design agency faces many years of risk reduction activity.

This threshold question is very important to understand and it is possible for different design agencies to answer this question differently, depending on the magnitude of the design loop in question. Design agencies will call on all their background tools, technologies, experience and know-how before answering one way or another. However, in the case of DCNS a clear and positive decision was made that the French Navy’s Barracuda would provide a very suitable design reference for the Shortfin Barracuda.

The data that enabled the selection of the Barracuda as the Australian design reference included such things hull diameter, length and steel, existing hydrodynamic studies of manoeuvrability, drag  and acoustic performances and the suitability of main systems including, ship control, electrical, hydraulic, sonar, sensors, habitability, weapons storage, cooling, and ancillary platform systems. In each of these major systems the existing system design of the French Barracuda is used for the Shortfin Barracuda and from these known references an interpolation is performed for the new system design.

DCNS has high confidence in the performance of the design as the Shortfin Barracuda is within the envelope of the nuclear design. Where the nuclear design’s systems are not transferable the next most applicable systems are chosen. The main area where Barracuda design references were not used was in the area of the electrical system (batteries and voltage), power generation (induction and diesel generators) and propulsion (main electric motor). In these systems the design reference comes from the Scorpene class of diesel electric submarines, or from an existing submarine technology within DCNS. Existing technologies are re-used in all systems in the Shortfin Barracuda Block 1A. System by system, the whole ship performance is validated and the design loop closed.

The selection of the nuclear Barracuda as the design reference for the Shortfin also enabled DCNS to meet requirements in addition to range and endurance. The Australian requirements for warm water operations and very low acoustic signatures are good examples. As the nuclear Barracuda is designed to operate globally, shares the same hull form as the Shortfin Barracuda and is also compliant with nuclear safety standards, it is very suitable for the Australian requirement. This avoids many years of design studies for validation of equipment such as pumps and hoses, and allows the designer to take margins for higher performances elsewhere in the ship.

Acoustic performance is driven by three related factors of onboard equipment: silencing, reduction in the noise of the propeller and the overall hydrodynamic performance of the hull while manoeuvring. For the Australian requirement the nuclear Barracuda is again the closest design reference and all the relevant ship systems are reused. The challenge for any attack submarine is to maintain a nearly silent acoustic signature at a speed necessary to manoeuvre within weapons range of the target. The nuclear Barracuda is designed to reduce radiated noise when operating at a speed sufficient in order to close a threat submarine undetected. Of particular importance is the pump-jet propulsor, which combines a rotor and stator within a duct to significantly reduce the level of radiated noise through the effects of wake harmonisation and avoidance of cavitation.

One other myth worth debunking is that designers of nuclear submarines do not have to manage the power consumption of on board equipment as electricity from the reactor is “unlimited”. In large attack submarines, such as the French and proposed Australian Barracuda, the power consumption of the hotel load (the electricity needed to power the combat system and maintain the life support of the crew) is more than that of the propulsion system at the most frequently used speeds. In the case of nuclear submarines, the very high cost and significant weight of the reactor, as well as the safety requirement to operate on batteries without the reactor online, drives the architect to minimise the consumption of the hotel load to the lowest realisable level. In the case of a conventional submarine the preservation of energy in the main storage battery drives the same system design.

In summary, the description of the design process and choices made in the development of the Shortfin Barracuda Block 1A show that one submarine is not converted to another. Rather, a design reference is selected and an iteration of a new design is developed to meet the requirement with interpolation of known data and the re-use of proven technologies.