“Thanks, Jerry. I’ve got that,” said Morland.
The Baltics team leader cut in. “Tom, I want you to be aware of the strategic picture because you’ve got a new job. So, here’s my direction. Your team task is finished. You’re now our PJHQ liaison officer to Latvia. Your team stays with you, but apart from them, you’re on your own. As you know, our dedicated military attaché was removed in the last round of defense cuts. It’s now down to you to be our ears and eyes.”
“Got that, Sir.” Morland felt a sense of rising excitement, mixed with extreme trepidation; he might just be about to find himself at ground zero of the next big conflict.
“What we could be seeing, Tom, are all the ingredients of ambiguous or deniable warfare; what Russia did in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. This could be all about undermining the integrity of Latvia from within, without having to deploy overt military force. Or it could be something far more heavy handed. We have no idea at the moment. It could go either way, or it could be a storm in a teacup and there are plenty here who tend toward that conclusion, which is why I still have operational control of you for the time being.
“I happen not to agree with the optimists. So, I want you to get everywhere and to update us every time you have something useful to report. I want you to base yourself in the embassy, where we’ve got better comms, and you’ll have some security and life support. But I particularly want you to get alongside the Latvian Chief of Defense, General Raimonds Balderis. He’s a good man. He came to PJHQ last year. We’ve been in touch with his office and he’s expecting you this afternoon. Also, get yourself known in the National Armed Forces Joint HQ and, above all, stay in close touch with their Special Forces.”
“Roger, Sir.”
“Have you any questions for me right now?”
“Nothing immediate, Sir.”
“Good man. Jerry will pick up any questions and provide all the usual reach-back support. We’ll come back on the analysis of your picture of the man in the riot. Nicky will come back to you with GCHQ input, once they’ve had a chance to analyze the mobile traffic. Good luck.”
As before, the screen went black. “Well, Sir,” commented Wild laconically, “we’ve got our work cut out now.”
1400 hours, Thursday, May 18, 2017
AS A ROYAL Marine who had spent much of his early career at sea, waiting on a ship for things to happen, McKinlay had reserves of patience that rarely ran dry. But today was really testing him. He was back, for the third time since Sunday’s meeting, in the NAC Council Chamber sitting at the great round table. His immediate boss, the SACEUR, had, yet again, been called across the Atlantic to testify before the Senate Armed Forces Committee, which is why he was representing him today.
The second meeting that week had followed the same pattern as Sunday’s meeting, with nothing to show from it except a series of self-serving statements from ambassadors of NATO nations whose countries had little in the way of armed forces worth speaking of in any event, and whose commitment to the cause of collective defense appeared to be measured anywhere between paper thin and non-existent. But McKinlay also knew that, however irritating the tortuous process of the NAC, it had proved in the past to be remarkably statesmanlike in its decision making. And once a decision had been made, the need for consensus meant that the nations were usually prepared to stick with it. Shame at being seen as a backslider was a great motivator.
He never ceased to be impressed by Secretary General Kostilek, the former Polish prime minister, for the way he steered the NAC’s meetings. True, many ambassadors complained that he did not allow them enough time to fully explain their nations’ positions.
But at least, thought McKinlay, he kept things moving.
When ambassadors began to repeat the same platitudes, he cut them short and asked them to focus on the issues at hand. As for the Chairman of the Military Committee, the Danish general, Knud Vahr, if anything McKinlay admired him more. Not only did he have to sit through endless NAC meetings listening to the ambassadors, he also had to put up with the dead weight and disinterest of the Military Committee, that group of senior military representatives from each of the Allied nations who were meant to add value to the NAC, but who seldom could be prevailed upon to say anything. Many were at the end of their, usually, distinguished careers, and were more focused on enjoying the Brussels diplomatic dinner-party circuit and the excellent networking opportunities it offered for future consultancy opportunities.
Today’s meeting had been called following the chaos in Riga yesterday. The decision-making body of NATO was debating the issue that underpinned the Alliance’s very existence: whether recent events in Latvia warranted the declaration of Article 5, the founding principle of the North Atlantic Treaty. This stated that an attack on one member state was an attack on all. It bound all members to come to the aid of the victim—as if they themselves were under attack. The motion before the NAC was whether to declare an Article 5 emergency on behalf of the three members who had called for it: Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.
This was first time since the 9/11 attacks, and only the second time in history, that an Article 5 emergency had ever been called and that, McKinlay knew, made this meeting deadly serious.
But what seemed to be making it particularly serious for some of those seated around that circular table was that the meeting had been called over lunchtime, because of difficulties in programming the Secretary General’s attendance. Some ambassadors were already showing irritation at missing out on their daily, all-expenses-paid lunch. Despite the seriousness of the world situation, McKinlay couldn’t help chuckling to himself as he watched the emergency solution to the developing culinary crisis; a couple of Belgian waiters, in white shirts, black bow ties and waistcoats, entered and began to circulate mini-bars of extra-dark Cote d’Or chocolate to help quell the growing pangs of ambassadorial hunger.
Chocolate safely dispensed and waiters removed, the Secretary General opened the meeting. He invited the Latvian ambassador, as the representative of the principal nation under threat, to open the discussion.
“Secretary General, my fellow ambassadors, generals, dear colleagues and friends, only once in its sixty-eight-year history has NATO agreed the declaration of Article Five, and that was after the unprecedented attack on the USA on the eleventh of September 2001. A day of infamy we will all remember only too well. Today the motion before you is to declare an Article Five emergency at the request of my country and our close friends and neighbors, Estonia and Lithuania. I will leave it to the Estonian and Lithuanian ambassadors to explain their countries” positions. But from the Latvian perspective, what we have seen in the past few months, and most graphically in the rioting in Riga yesterday, is the progressive application of the new Russian techniques of warfare designed to undermine the integrity of Latvia before there is any need to cross our boundaries with an invasion force.
“The very rules of war have changed and what we are witnessing in Latvia is the role of non-military means of achieving political and strategic goals; war, as it were, by other means. The advantages we in Latvia enjoy as a result of NATO’s unconditional guarantee of collective defense are being nullified by the sophisticated application of hybrid or asymmetric techniques by Russia, techniques we saw most recently in the invasion of eastern Ukraine and Crimea three years ago. In essence, to paraphrase General Gareyev, the Russian Chief of the General Staff, what we are seeing is the use of special operations forces and internal opposition to create a permanently operating front through the entire territory of what Russia has deemed to be an enemy state; my peaceful, democratic, freedom-loving Latvia.”