Bfore WW2...Which Country Was To Believe Had The Most Powerful Military Forces In Europe (198)

Over the past five years, Germany has become very powerful. Since Britain’s (hopefully temporary) economic difficulties, the German economy has emerged not only as the largest – but by far the largest – in the European Union. Consequentially, some have asked whether we are now entering a period of German hegemony, a kind of German ‘unipolar moment’. Yesterday, however, the British strategist, Julian Lindley-French, explained that this is impossible – Germany will not become a European hegemon. Why? Because – as he puts it – ‘Britain will never accept German leadership.’ He argues that any attempt made by Berlin to ‘shackle’ London will fail, for three key reasons:



Britain’s economic power – even after the Financial Crisis – is still too great and too different (being heavily financial and increasingly globalised) to allow Germany to apply the same kind of pressure on it than it has on places like Greece, Italy, Spain and France.


Britain is a political counter-weight to Germany, for historical and political reasons. The United Kingdom is ‘not-Germany’, which means other European Union Member States will flock to it when German power becomes too overbearing. Britain will capitalise on this, particularly in the European peripheries.


Britain’s military power remains robust, while Germany’s is pitifully weak. Of all the European Union’s Member States, none can mount the kind of expeditionary operations the British can; no country has battle-hardened regular forces like those of the United Kingdom. The British military has fought battles or has seen tours of duty all over the world for decades; it also retains a global geopolitical footprint, with military stations reaching into the Indian Ocean and the South Atlantic.
Lindley-French counsels that London should consolidate its European position by building coalitions to further maximise its power. Again, he is right. As I argued with Luis Simón in The RUSI Journal in 2010 and 2011, Britain needs to carefully construct closer military relations with France, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands, as well as, and particularly, the Nordic and Baltic states – something we described as London’s ‘Nordic drive’. The Baltic zone is critical to Britain’s geopolitical objectives: along with the Low Countries and the Mediterranean axis from Gibraltar to Cyprus, the Baltic is one of the three main anchors of British power. If London allows another country – like Russia – to gain control over the Baltic basin, the North Sea and Britain’s maritime routes would come under immediate and acute threat.


Importantly, the long-term indicators – geopolitical, economic and cultural – suggest that the future is on Britain’s side: by 2050, it will be the European Union’s most populous and wealthy society (unless the Scottish Nationalist Party succeeds in tearing the British union apart, rendering Scotland a de-facto English colony),


In short: since the end of the Second World War, Britain and the United States, along with France, have been, and will remain, the ‘grand anchors’ of Western civilisation.
Their military and financial power – sustained by their ideals, i.e. the rule of law and constitutional government – has continued to undergird the current European and world orders. Initially, to uphold this system, they had to focus their power into the heart of Europe to rehabilitate Germany and prevent Soviet Russia from moving in; today, however, as the world’s geopolitical heart is tilting towards an axis running from India, through China, and on to Japan, it is essential that both London and Washington divide their areas of concentration.


Ref. Yahoo .