That this House takes note of (1) the impact of the conflict in Ukraine, (2) the implications for the Integrated Defence Review, and (3) the case for the United Kingdom strengthening (a) its relationships with the European Union and other European allies, and (b) its commitment to NATO.
My Lords, right at the start of this debate I want to put on record my admiration for the courage and heroism of Ukraine’s people and their president. The Russian invasion of Ukraine constitutes the greatest threat to peace in Europe since the Second World War. None of us imagined that we would ever again witness such terrible scenes of armed butchery on our continent, even though the horrors of Yugoslavia in the 1990s warn us that the blood-soaked legacies of Europe’s history cannot simply be washed away.
I have some experience of Ukraine. Some 20 years ago, the Prime Minister appointed me to head a regular No. 10 dialogue with its presidential administration. We visited Ukraine four or five times, taking in Crimea, Odessa and Lviv, as well as Kyiv, and there were return meetings in London. President Leonid Kuchma’s Ukraine was then deeply divided, caught between its western provinces, which are more nationalist and committed to Europe, and the pro-European east where the oligarchs retained close links to the old Soviet fatherland but did not want a return to Moscow domination. These divisions deepened at the time of 2014 revolution, the deposition and fleeing of President Yanukovych, Putin’s seizure of Crimea and the outbreak of civil war in the Donbass. Putin’s behaviour since then has force Ukrainians to make a choice, with the vast majority choosing freedom and independence, united behind a commitment to a shared European future.
Today, my emotions are very simple ones. Thank God for NATO. Thank God for 70-years of cross-party leadership that learned the lessons of the 20th century: that the world is safer when Britain does not cower, does not retrench and does not abandon our hard-fought values out of political expediency. Also, as a Labour man, let me say thank God for Clem Attlee and Ernest Bevin, who gave us this legacy. Thank God for leaders of the Labour Party such as Hugh Gaitskell, Denis Healey and Jim Callaghan, who consistently sustained that legacy; and, in my generation, my noble friends Lord Robertson of Port Ellen and Lord Reid, both whom I had the privilege of working with very closely. Today, Keir Starmer stands firmly in that same tradition.
The Ukraine crisis shows that NATO belongs to the future not the past. It has shown the crucial role that at present the United States, and only the United States, can play. Joe Biden and his Administration have been magnificent, but the shadow of a re-elected Donald Trump hangs over NATO like a suspended death sentence. There will be no closer watchers of the 2022 mid-terms and the presidential primaries than the occupants of the Kremlin.
I congratulate the Government for a good part of their immediate Ukraine response: tougher sanctions on Russia, help for Ukraine’s devastated economy and rapid supply of weaponry. Yet our support for refugees has been lamentable, and we must do more to sanction Russians and hold them financially accountable for their conduct. Liz Truss’s rhetoric on war aims is overblown; she should remember that it is the brave Ukrainians, not us, who are fighting this war on the ground. Our aim should be to put Ukraine in a position where Zelensky can bring Putin to the negotiating table from a position of strength, not be forced to accede to a ceasefire that offers merely a temporary pause while Russia regroups. That requires Europe and the United States to devise a credible offer of military and economic security for Ukraine that, while not full NATO membership, is sufficient to deter Putin from future adventurism. We should also think about offering whoever emerges post Putin as his successor the potential for a relationship based on mutual security and respect, a return to the principles of the NATO-Russia Founding Act. We must preserve and strengthen NATO, and that means Britain and the rest of Europe rising from our past complacency, matching the gravity of current events with a concerted rethinking of the principles of our defence, foreign and wider security policy.
My Lords, what a pleasure to follow the thoughtful and comprehensive Motion moved by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. I would like to associate myself with the paean of praise to those level-headed, responsible Labour leaders down the decades who were prepared to deploy proportionate force in defence of western values, starting with that flinty patriot and still underrated politician Ernest Bevin.
I do not think many of us expected to be here after nearly three and a half months. If we cast our minds back to the dark days—figuratively and literally—of late February, I think we were expecting something very different. The talk then was about a Ukrainian Government in exile and counterinsurgency operations behind the lines and possibly some Ukrainian forces operating across the border from NATO territory. Why did that not happen? Why were the expectations, not only from the Kremlin but from most international observers, so misplaced? Obviously, there is not a single or simple answer, but I thought an interesting light was shone on it by a story that emerged towards the end of March, which suggested that the entire leadership of the Fifth Service of Russia’s FSB had been arrested.
These are, necessarily, murky waters and we cannot say for sure what happened in the world of espionage, but what seems to have happened—if the sources are believed—is that, as early as the 2014 intervention, Putin was planning a second intervention. He realised after the annexation of Crimea and part of Donbass that he had upset what had been an equilibrium between —to borrow 19th-century Russian terminology—westernisers and Slavophiles in Ukraine. He had taken several million Russophile voters out of the equation and given the pro-NATO forces a majority. He seems to have decided then on a further and decisive intervention.
If reports are to be believed, Putin set aside a substantial budget of billions of roubles to suborn key Ukrainians when the moment came, to bring regional governors, army generals, policy chiefs, mayors et cetera on to the payroll so that, at the key moment, they would open the gates. They would switch sides, denounce the Zelensky regime or whichever one was in power and accept the jurisdiction of whatever puppet regime was put in by the Kremlin. The problem was that the FSB did not believe the invasion would ever happen, and so the money that was set aside to prepare Ukraine instead disappeared into yachts in Cyprus and into Swiss bank accounts. We can imagine the scenes towards the end of last year when the President of the Russian Federation called in his spy chiefs and said, “Are we ready to go?” We can imagine a lot of nervous fingering of collars: “Absolutely, Vladimir Vladimirovich. No problem at all.” What were they going to do? They cannot even come here because, as we know from the Skripal and Litvinenko affairs, there is nowhere safe for an ex-spy. So they did the only thing you can logically do in that position. They tried to stop the invasion happening so that their embezzlement should not come to light, and they did so by telling us exactly what was planned, which was why our intelligence was so accurate.
My Lords, while I think it is right that we should review the integrated review in the context of the Ukraine war and a number of global issues that have come to light because of that war, I think the integrated review was broadly accurate in identifying the trends that would shape national security and the international environment over the next decade. It stated very clearly that NATO should remain
“the foundation of collective security”
in the Euro-Atlantic region and identified Russia as remaining “the most acute threat” to the UK’s security—both of which I think were right.
A number of people, including my noble friend Lord Liddle, believe there is not enough emphasis on working with the EU on security and defence matters. Having been involved in the defence arena for some 57 years, and a major NATO commander for a number of those years, I have no doubt whatever that we must ensure that our European allies channel their co-operative defence efforts through NATO, rather than trying to construct what I would call a “lesser NATO”, which will just divert resources for no defence benefit.
I also strongly support the integrated review’s intent that the UK should become
“the European partner with the broadest and most integrated presence in the Indo-Pacific—committed for the long term, with closer and deeper partnerships, bilaterally and multilaterally”
in that arena. Many of my interlocutors in the US military see this very much as a quid pro quo: the US has supported us in Europe and is delighted that we are actually showing an intent to do so in that region. It would be a catastrophic mistake to ignore the Indo-Pacific and China because of the war in Ukraine. I have no doubt that that will be a threat that comes up on us.
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, for this very timely and important debate. The noble Lord, Lord Hannan, said we have a better system in place, as a democracy, to identify and correct errors. I thoroughly agree, and I am going to talk about correcting the errors of Brexit.
There has been much debate this week over how to improve the economic and trade relationship with the EU, not least the suggestion by senior Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood that the UK should seek to rejoin the single market and customs union—a suggestion my party fully endorses, but it has ruffled some Brexiter feathers. A closer relationship in foreign and security policy ought to be less controversial. It was a sadly missed opportunity that this was not part of the Brexit deal, partly because of the poison from the rest of the “done deal”. The lack of trust being generated by this Government is prejudicing the chance of picking up that baton again and capitalising on the UK’s undoubted assets in security, defence and diplomacy. Health Secretary Sajid Javid has urged the RMT rail union to think again, act sensibly, “act like adults” and withdraw its strike threat. Would that he would address the same admonition to the Prime Minister over the crazy and damaging proposal to tear up the Northern Ireland protocol.
It is not only the prospects for British science that are being damaged by the confrontational approach currently being pursued. British, European, transatlantic and indeed global security are being harmed as well by the absence of trust and the failure to seize opportunities for a closer foreign and security relationship. Apart from changes in attitude, there needs to be a big, clear political declaration of a fundamental change in the UK’s approach, setting out the intention to act as a good neighbour to the EU and to repair the damage caused over the last six years by Conservative Governments, and especially this one. This may not happen under the present Government, but hopefully will under a new one. There is a clear basis for extending co-operation, building on areas where it is working well, most obviously in the policy towards Ukraine. It makes sense to start with the content of co-operative ventures and look later for suitable structures and mechanisms, but it can start with good relationships through meetings of Ministers and officials, maybe backed with exchanges of staff, such as between the FCDO and the European External Action Service.
My Lords, the timely, multi-headed debate of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, so well introduced by him a few minutes ago, surely requires us not only to recall but to act on Keynes’s dictum: “When the facts change, I change my views.” This is because an awful lot of facts have changed in the last few months which fundamentally affect our national security interests, and it is no good ignoring the need to change the conclusions we may previously have drawn. To recognise the need for change does not require us to admit that we were wrong before; it is just common sense.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has quite simply torn up the post-Cold War rule book on European security we all agreed to in Paris in 1990, as well as some of the basic precepts of the UN charter. The new Cold War is not going to be over any time soon; the war in Ukraine is going to require much determination and unity with our NATO and EU allies, if it is to be brought to a conclusion that does not reward Russia for its aggression and does not merely represent a prelude to further hostilities. That will require hard thought about what we ourselves are prepared to contribute to a newly shaped European security order; it will require more resources, both military and economic. It is not a beauty contest between allies. Evidently, there are consequences and reordered priorities for those—at the time, I believed they were quite well marshalled—in the integrated defence review. There should be no shame or defensiveness about admitting that. Every one of our partners is having to reorder its priorities, and some—Germany in particular—are doing so already in a much more substantial way than we have yet done.
The Indo-Pacific tilt, of which the Government are so proud, is not rendered inoperable; China’s rise and ambitions warn against that. However, the European theatre, and countering Russia’s actions, have again become our top priority. I suggest that we need to pay more attention to Africa, where we should be working in close concert with our European partners and where, together, we could make a real difference. That brings any analysis to our relationships with the EU, its member states and within NATO. Instead of working ourselves up into a frenzy about a European army, or the supposed threat from President Macron’s strategic autonomy, we should recognise that the rise in defence spending right across Europe is precisely what we have been calling for over decades. We need, as a crucial player in European security—and, with France, one of Europe’s two nuclear powers—to be there shaping its form and content, contributing constructive thinking and co-operation, not barracking from the side of the pitch.
My Lords, it is a very great honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, with his immense diplomatic experience. How right he is to remind us that principles are constant but policies have to change. We are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, for the thoughtful way in which he introduced this debate.
I am also grateful to my noble friend Lord Hannan and his characteristically charismatic imagination. He made one very important point that we must all recognise: it is 106 days since we woke to the news that the invasion had begun. A day after it, we assembled in your Lordships’ House and had a full-scale debate in which some extremely fine speeches were made. We now must assess the situation because, as he made plain, 106 days ago, we did not imagine that we would be quite where we are now. Indeed, all the talk was of a quick occupation of Kyiv and the probable exiling of the Government, which would force President Zelensky to seek sanctuary. His moving words—“I stay here”—galvanised Europe. Here we are today with the Russians shown up for what they are: those who would destroy wantonly and kill indiscriminately, but who have not succeeded in subjugating.
We must be realistic, and recognise what we can actually do with our limited capacities. That is why I called, on Tuesday this week, for an international conference convened by the UK on Ukraine. The noble Lord, Lord West, in his very sober analysis was right to remind us of our limitations. Of course we have done well, and I congratulate the Government, but I do not think that it is realistic to suppose that an honourable settlement demands a restitution of the whole of Ukraine as it existed in 2014—it demands a restoration of Ukraine as it was on 24 February 2022. That is absolutely essential.
If that does not happen, we are all defeated because the principles of democratic government, freedom of speech and all the things we treasure so much in this House will have suffered a severe rebuff which could be followed—and how right the noble Lord, Lord West, was to refer to this—by a greater confrontation with a greater power later this century. We could be in a very difficult situation.
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. I agree with him that we face an extraordinarily great challenge in the West, and those of us who subscribe to our values can only face that challenge together; there is no possibility of us doing so individually. I draw attention to my entry in the register of interests, particularly my chairmanship of the European Leadership Network, and vice-chairmanship of the Nuclear Threat Initiative. I join other noble Lords in thanking and congratulating my noble friend Lord Liddle for securing this timely and welcome debate and for the careful and balanced way that he opened it.
On Friday I chaired a meeting of the core group of the Euro-Atlantic Security Leadership Group. The EASLG, which was formed after the 2014 invasion of Crimea and Donbass, is sponsored by the European Leadership Network, the Munich Security Conference, the Russian International Affairs Council and the Nuclear Threat Initiative, and includes former and current officials and experts from Euro-Atlantic states. The EASLG is designed to test ideas and develop proposals for improving security in areas of existential common interest in these complex and difficult times. It operates as an independent and informal initiative, with participants from more than 15 countries who reflect the diversity of the Euro-Atlantic region, and it particularly includes both Ukrainians and Russians in this conversation.
Our focus was on Ukraine. I will draw the attention the House to two humanitarian challenges that we discussed, which otherwise are unlikely to surface in this debate but are a very strong reflection of the complexity of modern warfare, and also one issue of deep strategic importance that has emerged recently in this context. At this discussion we were joined by representatives of the International Commission on Missing Persons and the Halo Trust, which is a British and US charity set up to remove the debris left behind by war, in particular land mines and unexploded ordnance.
My Lords, this is a most dangerous moment—as dangerous as the Cuba crisis of 1962 and more dangerous than the crisis of 1983. It certainly calls for cool heads. But the request by some noble Lords to revisit the integrated review is a rush to judgment. A 100-day war is a short war. This is not the moment to draw definitive conclusions. We have yet to see, for example, the full impact of the weapons systems we and the Americans have sent to Ukraine. I am the last person to question military men on military matters, but when I hear the cry that the UK needs more tanks and a bigger Army, I note that Ukraine, with far fewer men and tanks, has managed to humiliate the Russian army around Kyiv and Kharkiv. Size is not everything, as I should know.
Nevertheless, there are important things to be said. As the noble Lord, Lord West, noted, the integrated review got it right: NATO is the foundation of our security; Russia is the most acute physical threat; the US is our most important ally; and we should work closely with the EU on matters of defence. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine does not require these principles to be revisited. Far from it—it reinforces them.
Putin will make Russia an awkward and aggressive European neighbour for years to come. This is what we must plan for: a strategy for the long run which is both political and military. The French President has urged that we should not seek to humiliate Putin in any peace deal. Macron misses the point. Putin has already humiliated himself. His invasion has strengthened NATO, opening the door to its further enlargement, rained down sanctions on Russia’s head and revealed the Russian army to be as brutal as the Nazis.
Today, the West has a short-term and a long-term challenge. The first is to provide Ukraine with sufficient support to repel the Russian invaders without provoking a third world war. The second is to answer the question: how does this end? There is already much disagreement on who decides the terms of any peace deal. There are even some, including in Westminster, who would sign an agreement with Putin over Ukrainian heads. Yet, no matter how tricky the issues, the unity of the West—of NATO and the EU—is essential. We do not need competition between the two organisations, driven by the French.
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Ukraine has demonstrated that the key to our security is Europe, not the mushy rhetoric of global Britain. The requirement is a stronger and more united Europe with Britain playing its full part. Brexit is done. Let us for now put it behind us. The priority today is a more constructive approach to the EU and its key member states.
Let me suggest five ways forward. First, Britain needs to articulate a Europe-wide strategy to confront and contain Russia. Last year’s integrated review had some strengths. It half-identified the danger that stood before us: a revanchist Russian state intent on aggressively remaking the post-Cold War settlement. Yet it de-emphasised Britain’s commitment to Europe and the need for new thinking on transatlantic and European collective security. It deprioritised the Army. It focused British grand strategy on a tilt towards the Indo-Pacific to confront the rising power of China. It showed, in Professor Michael Clarke’s words,
“frankly insulting indifference to European partners”.
Its claims to be truly integrated now ring hollow. There was no discussion of oil, gas or energy security; no discussion of the role of Russia as the energy tap for so much of post-Cold War European development; no discussion of the power that OPEC nations continue to hold over the West; and no discussion of how the urgent transition from fossil fuels is now a security, as well as climate change, imperative. Furthermore, the advent of economic warfare against the Russian economy, with unprecedented sanctions, the freezing of central bank reserves and the pursuit of oligarchs across the world, is all new in international politics. The integrated review ignored the complexity of it.
Russia is the greatest threat to European security. Let us understand our objectives and our capabilities and build a strategy in common with our allies that will contain its aggressive ambitions. Only by articulating a common strategy, embracing a multilateral security partnership with our European allies, and only by embracing Europe, will we be taken seriously by the United States.
I have a question for the Minister. Are the Government planning to revise seriously their integrated review in the light of changed circumstances? Secondly, this will require reinvestment in British defence capabilities. The integrated review aspired to prepare us for a military challenge on the far side of the world but disregarded the necessary elements that would support our European partners and enable us to proactively confront Russia. The military was to be reshaped as
“leaner, more lethal, nimbler, and more effectively matched to current and future threats”.
Yet the Army in practice are set to lose their entire fleet of Warrior infantry fighting machines, with goodness knows what to replace them, and one-third of their Challenger tanks. Our land forces are now the smallest they have been since the 18th century.
We have been right to provide weaponry to the Ukrainian military, but we need urgently to replenish the stocks of those weapons that we have sent there. Even before Russia’s assault, the defence procurement budget faced a shortfall of more than £7 billion—incidentally, twice the whole of Ukraine’s 2021 defence budget. Rising inflation represents a further axe to the defence budget today, which is held constant in cash terms. My second question for the Minister is how much money has been set aside for replenishment of the weaponry that we have sent to Ukraine, and where is it coming from? The Government wax lyrical about global Britain, but we lack the capabilities to match words with action.
Thirdly, Britain should be an advocate for sustained investment in Ukrainian reconstruction and dealing with the global fallout from the conflict. NATO did not emerge in a vacuum. There was the Marshall Plan, and the focus on economic and social conditions, which brilliantly demonstrated the superiority of our values and economic system. Circumstances call on us to do the same again today. We must help Ukraine with debt—and, as for the emerging global famine, that is going to test us an awful lot over the coming months. We have to consider using the frozen Russian assets to invest in Ukrainian redevelopment and the mitigation of the global food crisis.
Fourthly, we must transform Britain’s relationship with the European Union, which our Government continue to treat with disdain. In some regards, this is deeply comical—for instance, when the Prime Minister would have us believe that the Ukrainian people’s struggle for their very lives is akin to Brexit. When the Foreign Secretary went to Brussels, she tweeted about her meetings with NATO and G7 allies but somehow forgot that she had been invited to the EU Foreign Affairs Council, a very special step on the part of the EU. Contempt cannot be a guiding principle for British foreign policy. The Foreign Secretary’s notion of an international network of liberty sounds appealing, but what on earth does it mean in practice? Sanctions, aid, energy policy and now weapons provisions are being co-ordinated through the mechanisms of the European Union. We must deal with realities, not fantasies, and build a sustainable partnership with them.
Fifthly—and this will be more controversial, I think—we should work with our European allies and partners to develop greater European strategic autonomy. Some deride President Macron’s advocacy of European strategic autonomy as a typically Gaullist and anti-American thing. I can see friends nodding on the other side of the House. Or they see it as a federalist project with which we should have nothing to do whatever. But in my view, it can be seen as a means of getting the whole of Europe to be serious about defence, as, thankfully, under Olaf Scholz, the Germans now are. It can, should and will complement NATO, not threaten NATO. How long have the Americans and the UK complained about the continent not living up to our NATO responsibilities? As a result of Ukraine, Germany is set to surpass, quite soon, the UK as the third-largest defence spender in the world.
We have no relationship with the enlarged budget of the European Defence Agency. How are we going to take part in procurement programmes? President Macron recently articulated the interesting idea of a tiered European political arrangement, with an outer political community for nations that are not EU members. Is this not an opportunity for Britain, a potential vehicle for closer European co-operation, without rejoining the EU itself?
I have another question for the Minister. What consideration are the Government giving to President Macron’s thinking? A European political community involves no loss of sovereignty for us. For Ukraine, it offers the chance to fulfil its European vocation. Some 86% of Ukrainians support EU membership— even two-thirds of those who live in the eastern provinces. I believe the EU should accept Ukraine as a candidate for membership, but getting there would be protracted and complex and exacerbated by the war. A European political community could give reality to Ukraine’s European vocation much sooner.
In conclusion, Putin is driving Europe together and driving it to change. Britain has to go with the flow. We are thinking a lot about the forthcoming NATO summit, the welcome prospect of Finnish and Swedish membership, the revision of the NATO strategic concept, but we should also be thinking about how we work with Europe’s common security and defence policy. Brexit has warped the discourse on European co-operation for far too long. There is no better time than this moment of acute danger for Britain to change course.
I cannot, of course, confirm that story, but it does seem pretty plausible, especially when we look at what happened following the invasion. We saw the same pattern again and again, of failures of equipment and failures of procurement, because the fundamental weakness of any autocratic system is that people tell their superiors what they want to hear. Therefore, what was expected in the Kremlin, even now, was very far from what was happening on the ground. This, it seems to me, is the real strength of democracies. It is why we tend to have a surprisingly good record at winning wars. It is not that our people are braver or more virtuous; it is that we have better mechanisms in place to identify and correct errors. That, among other things, is a system worth defending.
We can argue about what exact military and strategic response we should take. One could take the line the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, just took. One could equally argue that in fact, since NATO was put together largely to contain a Soviet menace, and since the Russian menace has shown to be much weaker than we thought as recently as February, the time to be strengthening NATO was five years ago, and so the argument for it is now weaker than it was. There is a debate to be had, and it should be had in a judicious and thoughtful manner. You can at least make the case for a more global and dispersed approach to security and that the peculiar interest in western Europe’s security that dominated our post-war thinking is no longer quite as pressing.
Whatever view we take on that, the one thing we have learned is that it is worth defending our values even if that means going out-of-area. The invasion of Ukraine was no threat to the United Kingdom. There was no realistic scenario in which Russian troops were going to be marching through Kent. But as in 1914, as in 1939, we took a decision to defend our values in the defence of allied European democracies. Sure, it is an imperfect democracy in the case of Ukraine—I do not think anyone denies that—but, none the less, it had an aspiration to become a more pluralistic and liberal society. When we endorse that process in other countries, we make the world safer and more prosperous for ourselves. It is for that reason that I hope noble Lords on all sides will add their voices to those of the patriotic Ukrainian soldiers as they fire their British-made missiles at Russian armour and join them in saying, “God save the Queen.”
My difficulties are rather around the MoD plans laid out in Defence in a Competitive Age, which covered the contribution of the MoD and the Armed Forces to achieving the objectives set out in the IR. Much of this stems from the fact that, despite all sorts of intentions, there has been a lack of funding in defence for many years. Looking to the future, that lack of funding is exacerbated by the assumption of what are very illusory efficiency savings—they just will not happen; we know this from past experience. Spending money on defence is clearly very hard for Governments in our cosy, secure society, but the reason we are in a cosy, secure society is because we spent money on defence. There is considerable truth in the view that wars are won not on the battlefield but by building up military capability beforehand. It is noticed by competitors, particularly dictators, and therefore it prevents war—but it takes time.
Many of us who have warned of chronic underfunding have been told time and again that we are wrong. The reality is that our Armed Forces are too weak to prevent war, which is something that Armed Forces do rather well, and if there is a war, which I am afraid one day there probably will be, they lack the equipment and manpower to keep us safe. Our Army, Navy and Air Force are too small. They lack the ability to withstand the inevitable attrition and are insufficiently equipped with state-of-the-art, fully maintained weapons—that is important—and sufficient war stocks—that too is important—for the inevitably high war-usage rates that we know happen, as Ukraine has illustrated very clearly.
The integrated review planned to restructure the Armed Forces for
“permanent and persistent global engagement”.
Therefore, our maritime strategy makes sense, not least because we are an island nation, which we seem to forget regularly, and in particular after the large shift of resources away from the maritime into the continental warfare area over decades in our counter-terrorist and failed nation building in south-east Asia. One cannot fault the desire to make the Army
“more lethal, nimbler and more effectively matched to current and future threats.”
Of course we want to do that, but we need to be very wary of making it “leaner”. Numbers matter, whether of ships, aircraft or people. The reduction of the Army to 72,500 is a step too far.
There seems to be a belief in government that future wars will be fought solely in cyberspace, using advanced technologies such as AI and quantum, and that there is no need for traditional military equipment and numbers. That is dangerously simplistic nonsense. Clearly, those new things are very important to the way we fight a war, but we need more than that. Greater integration of traditional maritime, land and air capabilities with the domains of cyber and space, and increasing investment in those domains, makes sense, but it does not mean spending less, I am afraid, on the traditional areas: they cannot be cut. For example, the advantages of high tech in helping the Ukrainians have been highlighted in this recent conflict, but the Ukrainians still need boots on the ground. The steady pressure of heavy forces is grinding them down, and we ignore that at our peril. Tanks, for example, are not redundant. The fact that so much effort and expense are put into destroying them shows that they remain important on the battlefield. No, we do not need large tank armies, but my goodness we still need tanks.
One area we need to note is the recently increased Russian jamming of GPS receivers on the drones that Ukraine has been using to such good effect to locate the enemy, direct artillery fire and attack tanks. They are now becoming ineffective because of Russian jamming of GPS. I have spoken before in the House about our vulnerability to GPS jamming: we really have to do something, and I think this needs urgent government attention. So is this now being done and co-ordinated, because it is a crucial risk to us?
The Government have a choice over whether we spend what is required to ensure the safety of our nation in defence terms to stop world war, look after our dependencies and our people or not. At present, I believe they are getting the choice wrong. The decline in military capability is a choice, and not one we should have made in a highly chaotic and very dangerous world. With war raging in Europe, and possibly extending to a world war, there is a need for an immediate uplift in defence spending.
The present Government have prioritised bilateral relationships with EU states over those with the EU institutions. There is nothing wrong with good bilateral relations, of course, except that doing it in order to undermine the EU and somehow demonstrate that the UK does not need, and indeed disdains, the EU is very unwise and counterproductive. I hope the current Foreign Secretary can adopt a more pragmatic attitude than the arrogant one of the previous incumbent. Maybe the FCDO does not do humility, but the attitude of superiority coupled with cynicism that the UK often got away with as a member state will not wash as a third country.
There needs to be a recognition in London, in particular, that the EU is a serious security and defence actor. The scope for this is evident from the experience on sanctions against Russia over Ukraine, where the alignment has either been explicit, such as UK sanctions mirroring those of the EU, or the two have been complementary and mutually reinforcing. This is an excellent precedent.
The European Council, at the Versailles summit in March,
“reaffirmed their commitment to take more responsibility for the EU’s own security … The leaders stressed that continued strong coordination on security and defence with partners and allies is key in this respect, including EU-NATO cooperation”.
In addition, EU
“leaders agreed to … develop further incentives for collaborative investments in joint projects and procurement; invest in … cybersecurity … ; foster synergies between civilian, defence and space research and innovation”
and
“invest in critical and emerging technologies”.
This surely gives a good platform for deepening UK-EU co-operation over defence industrial issues, perhaps by joining or becoming an associate of the European Defence Agency.
The UK could also seek to participate in one or more PESCO—Permanent Structured Cooperation—projects. The one on Military Mobility is much valued by EU and NATO members in eastern Europe, and is indeed a centrepiece of the increasing EU-NATO co-operation and overlap as Finland and Sweden are poised to join NATO and Denmark has decided through a referendum—which is very welcome—to end its opt-out from the EU’s common security and defence policy. The importance of the Military Mobility project hardly needs stressing; it enables
“the unhindered movement of military personnel and assets within … the EU.”
The other opportunity, besides the European Defence Agency and PESCO, might be for the UK to participate in European security and defence missions, as other third countries do. There is, of course, a chapter on cybersecurity as an example of thematic co-operation in the TCA. It is disappointing that this has, so far as I know, remained an unexplored opportunity. Can the Minister tell me if there is any more life in it now? Is there any prospect of the UK participating in the EU Agency for Cybersecurity—ENISA—which it can in fact request?
The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, mentioned the idea from President Macron of a political community wider than the EU. It may go nowhere, and it is partly designed to head off pressure from candidate countries for early membership. However, it is an olive branch and the kind of idea that offers opportunities for a third country like the UK, so I hope that it will get a positive response, even from the present Government.
That sort of constructive approach is what our principal ally, the United States, would like to see us making. We really should not, yet again, fall into the trap of thinking that we know better than it does what is in the US interest; we have done that quite often in the past, and it has proved pretty painful. The reality is that these fundamental shifts in the security structures around us present us with both opportunities as well as risks and costs. However, those opportunities will be realised only if we show a decent respect for other people’s priorities and not just for our own. That was how NATO was successfully fashioned in the late 1940s by Ernest Bevin, and that is how the NATO of the 2020s will be strengthened if we have the wisdom to throw our weight behind it.
I urge noble Lords to concentrate on ensuring that we give President Zelensky all he needs to achieve an honourable settlement, because what has happened over the last 106 days is destruction that will take years to repair. We have got to put a great deal of money into that repair. That will cost us, as will the food crisis that looms over the world because of the mining of the Black Sea, which is likely to plunge us into greater difficulties in the year ahead.
Above all, as several noble Lords have referred to, we need to have an adult and proper relationship with our friends and allies in the European Union, many of whom are also in NATO, because we do not want a divided West. We have a duty in this country to ensure that we do not create unnecessary difficulties. I sincerely hope that the recent reports of the introduction of a Bill to override the protocol are wrong; you cannot abrogate international treaties which this Government entered into willingly and urged Parliament to adapt, adopt and pass—and we did it willingly. You cannot set that sort of example of abrogating treaties and claim to be a moral leader in global Britain. We must mend our fences with our European friends and allies and go forward together to ensure that the values that we each seek to encapsulate in our democracies are preserved and not defeated.
The estimates assembled by the ICMP from a variety of sources suggest that, since the beginning of 2014—when this war really began—more than 2, 500 people may have been kidnapped, abducted, forcibly disappeared or have gone missing from all levels of Ukrainian society, as well as from all sides of the political and conflict divide. This is now a weapon of war, as is moving people deliberately. Six million Ukrainians, mostly women and children, have left Ukraine, and many of these children are subject to disappearance because we do not know where all of them are.
The ICMP has been working in the war zones of Ukraine for years. It reported to us that the commitments agreed in an MoU between the Ukrainian Government and the International Commission on Missing Persons had not even begun to be implemented prior to the outbreak of hostilities on 24 February. Now, with a new legal framework, the whole situation has changed and, four weeks ago, the ICMP returned to Kyiv to make new arrangements. It has set up a forensic mission which was sent to Ukraine; it has completed its work and is now able to return with evidence and genetic samples from bodies so they can be identified. There is interest in setting up a data depository that could serve multiple objectives, including potentially the pursuit of war crimes, and the ICMP hopes to set up an office in Kyiv to support these efforts. My question for our Government is, in considering this significant challenge, what resources are we devoting to supporting it?
The Halo Trust has been at work in various locations in Ukraine since 2016, with 450 Ukrainian staff, mostly locally engaged. The programme has now shifted from eastern Donbass to the centre of the country. Survey and risk-reduction teams are on the ground, dealing with new threats, which include anti-tank mines that have been laid in farmland, making these fields unusable and exacerbating the food security issue that will affect a substantial part of the world. Until they are cleaned up properly, we will not even begin to reverse the damage that has been done. Ukraine’s state emergency services have, by Halo’s estimate, already done a huge amount of clearance. Many minefields have been partially cleared, but partially cleared is not good enough in this situation; they require additional time and cost to finish the rest. Halo, however, is working under pre-war restrictions in Ukraine, precluding the use of high explosives. This requires pausing to allow the military, which is not equipped to do this, to deal with the issue before Halo can move in. Halo is trying to lobby the Ukrainian Government to lift this restriction, and any additional support that our Government can give in their communication and discussions with them will be extremely important. I urge the Government to take on this and other issues that the Halo Trust is dealing with. I commend the Government for the financial support that they have given—as have the US Government—to Halo, but it will not be able to do its work properly unless some of these local blockages are removed.
I turn now to the strategic question, which I raised at Oral Questions on Tuesday. Security guarantees in some indiscernible form continue to be referenced as a major issue in ending the war in Ukraine. I understand that Kyiv is now in discussion with the Quad about them. On Monday, the Prime Minister met President Zelensky, and Number 10 briefed the press that they had discussed security guarantees. In March, there was apparently progress on this in the negotiations between Ukraine and Russia; in April, that process stopped. There are many questions about this. This is a fundamental issue for us. We need to be at the table if security guarantees that involve our country in commitments are being discussed in the resolution of this conflict.
The most important question for the Government is this: when will someone come to Parliament, explain what is being discussed and spell out the implications of these security guarantees, which are clearly already being discussed, for our future security and that of the West?
The EU talks very loudly and carries only a modest stick. It was ever thus. As Janan Ganesh put it the other day in the FT:
“What began as a cohesive Europe … has become progressively mushier. The spectrum of policies from Estonia to France, to say nothing of Hungary, has widened troublingly.”
The conundrum is this: long-term European peace and stability cannot be achieved without Russia, as Henry Kissinger noted a few weeks ago, but Putin’s atrocities have put him so beyond the pale that many will refuse to negotiate with him.
In the end, the West will have to decide whether the purpose of its support is to put Kyiv in the strongest possible negotiating position with Russia or to see Russia defeated on the battlefield. I ask my noble friend the Minister: is there yet a settled view in government on this question? In which forum are these matters discussed with allies, given that the full NATO membership is prone to leaks?