Esteemed Colleagues,
Welcome to this year’s 20th Anniversary JAPCC Conference. I am once again in the chair as your Conference Moderator and I’m excited about what’s in store for us this time. It has been quite a year since our last conference, and indeed “Dominance Disrupted” feels like the perfect description of the past twelve months. With hypersonic weapons, artificial intelligence (AI) breakthroughs, and massive drone attacks on strategic bombers, we think it’s time to ask the question, “what’s the future of air superiority?”
As in the past, we’ll have four distinct panels (see the essays that follow). The first, a high-level strategic panel; the second, a technological panel describing the modern battlefield; the third, a deep dive into NATO’s innovation cycles; and finally, in panel four, we are going to conduct something new–a “thought experiment”. To a certain degree, perhaps all conferences are “thought experiments”. However, the explicit plan this year is to ask our specialist panel four members to discuss their highest priority tasks for NATO if the Alliance had as little as one year to prepare for a major war. Time is always a vital factor in war and, as history shows, it can be even more critical in terms of preparations for war.
In my university teaching, I sometimes use famous quotations to demonstrate that the things you thought were true often turn out to be false. Indications and warnings to watch out for are any phrases that start with “As Einstein/Churchill/Confucius once said…” It frequently turns out to be the case that no member of that famous trio ever said anything like the words that follow such an introduction.
“May you live in interesting times” is claimed to be a translation of a traditional Chinese curse quoted by Confucius. The expression is supposedly ironic – “interesting” times are usually times of trouble. You will just have to trust me when I tell you that there is no Chinese curse that says anything even remotely like that – the explanation is too long to give you here.
However, the sentiment conveyed by this ‘curse’ is, I think, extremely relevant to the situation facing NATO members today. In late April 2025, as President Trump pushes for ‘peace’ in the war that resulted from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, I am reminded of some grainy black and white footage from 30th September 1938 of a British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, and these words (which he most assuredly did say):
“The settlement of the Czechoslovakian problem, which has now been achieved is, in my view, only the prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace.”
As Einstein never said, history has a habit of repeating itself. Some historians have argued that Chamberlain was being very clever in his agreement with Hitler in Munich. In sacrificing Czechoslovakia and its people, he may have “bought” Great Britain an extra eleven months to prepare for war with Nazi Germany. At least part of that is true. Great Britain did not go to war until 3rd September 1939 in direct response to Hitler’s invasion of Poland. As we all know, Europe did not find peace for many years to come.
If you were unfortunate enough to live in Eastern Europe – on a line “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic” as Churchill (trust me) said, you were “subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in some cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow”. Churchill did somehow neglect to mention that the main reason for this was because he, along with President Roosevelt had trusted the word of Secretary General Stalin at Yalta, in February 1945. For those who struggle with European geography, Yalta is a city on the south coast of the Crimean Peninsula surrounded by the Black Sea.
Poland, the country that Great Britain had declared war to protect, was now badly let down. Polish soldiers, who had fought so bravely from bases in Great Britain, went back to their homeland to face the consequences of the Yalta agreement. It was not my nation’s finest hour.
Churchill, Great Britain’s wartime Prime Minister, had been disgusted with the agreement reached with Hitler by his predecessor Chamberlain in Munich in 1938. In that same year he wrote:
“We seem to be very near the bleak choice between War and Shame. My feeling is that we shall choose Shame, and then have War thrown in a little later, on even more adverse terms than at present.”
Perhaps the main lesson I can identify from this short history lesson is that Presidents and Prime Ministers rarely come out of peace talks smelling of roses. Trusting the word of any politician, without the backing of any iron-clad military-backed guarantee, frequently seems to end badly.
A final word about Churchill. Because of the promises made by Stalin at Yalta, Churchill believed that Stalin would keep his word, and he remarked:
“Poor Neville Chamberlain believed he could trust Hitler. He was wrong. But I don’t think I am wrong about Stalin.”
It was not Churchill, but George Santayana1 who wrote:
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
We can only hope that the judgment and memory of our democratically elected leaders has improved slightly in the eighty years since the Yalta agreement.
In 2025, we know that we cannot make the same statement uttered by Chamberlain in his radio address to the British Empire in 1938 when he spoke about:
“A quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing.”
Back now to this year’s conference and the thought experiment that forms the basis of the final panel. I hope that the great majority of conference delegates can stick around for this final item. It’s often the case that the (completely understandable) urge to catch an earlier flight or to dodge the traffic means that I find myself gazing out at a much smaller conference audience than I witnessed on the first morning. I have therefore set myself the challenge to do all that I can to make sure that panel number four is well worth sticking around for. Panels one through three, whilst complete on their own, will lay the foundations and build the momentum required for this. I urge you to stay right to the end and see if I succeed in this challenge.
I hope you all enjoy the 2025 JAPCC conference and that we can all take away something positive from it.
Bruce Hargrave
Moderator
