Ukraine (International Relations and Defence Committee Report)

Baroness Fall Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Fall (Con)]

My Lords, like other noble Lords, I congratulate the chair and members of the committee on this thoughtful and timely report. Although it is ostensibly about Ukraine, it focuses, of course, on the fragility of western security as we know it—or have known it since the Second World War. That is underpinned by NATO, the future of which now lies in the balance.

As the committee articulates so clearly in the report, things were already shifting before Trump started to take down the western security umbrella. They changed on the day that Russian troops marched into Ukraine, in February 2022—a clear failure of NATO to deter Russia in the first place. All this begs the uncomfortable question of whether we can claim to have a credible deterrent; many noble Lords have mentioned this today.

What do we actually mean by “deterrent”? I argue that it must have three factors: capability, preparedness and intent—that is the believability that an actor or set of actors will use force if they have to. It is possible that we have gradually been losing sight of this since the Cold War. The alarming question on all our minds today is whether we are seeing the end of the US-driven western alliance, as the USA’s statements about its preferred way forward on Ukraine, the role of NATO and the expectations from Europe, alongside the onslaught of geoeconomic weapons such as tariffs, have unnerved us all and led us to question America’s commitment to the transatlantic partnership from a military, political, economic and cultural perspective.

I mention this last point because here was the surprise. Much of the rest was already in the market, as others have said: the rush to peace with Putin, the not-unreasonable call for more European defence spending and the signal that American priorities may lie elsewhere. We knew, too, that Trump liked the word “tariff”—he called it “the most beautiful word”—but it was the Vice-President’s comment that Europe’s greatest threat lay within, and was not China or Russia, that really shocked us to the core. It made us wonder whether America is on our side.

In the past few weeks, we have heard accusations that the invasion was Ukraine’s fault and concessions were handed out to Russia without seeking its representations. Ukraine’s tireless and brave leader, holding the front line against tyranny, was branded a dictator. There was the ugly unravelling of talks in the Oval Office last Friday. All that came at the end of a week when the Americans sided with Iran, North Korea and Russia in the UN, as my noble friend Lord Roberts said.

Here, we have a sense of America treating its friends like its enemies and its enemies like its friends, as many noble Lords have said. This is the uncomfortable reality in which we find ourselves, but what does it actually mean? First, there is clearly a resetting of US-Russia relations. Is it to prise Russia away from China in a sort of reverse Kissinger move—many people have said that that would not be a good policy—or does Trump simply prefer to make deals with the strongmen of the world?

That begs a second question: what does all this mean for the China-US relationship, whose fraught relations have so dominated geopolitics in recent years? On the western alliance, the bottom line for us is that the security dynamic with a Trump-led USA is fundamentally shifting. I think that Trump would support a Europe that supports itself. We now need to decide how to respond and come up with a strategy. Herein lies the challenge but also the opportunity—one that opens up big strategic questions for us as a nation about who our closest allies are. What of NATO? What of Five Eyes? How much money will we need to spend on defence? Should we build a European defence umbrella within NATO or elsewhere? Is this umbrella something that we could offer as a new security home for Ukraine?

We are already seeing some choices—the decision to increase defence spending last week, for example. I support that, as other noble Lords have done today. I understand the decision to find that increase from ODA, which looks like a quick fix—no doubt there are savings that can be made there—but I have grave concerns about putting soft power against hard power, especially at such a critical moment when USA is retreating from the global stage. We must think strategically about how we influence and protect ourselves in the world, without leaving an opportunity wide open to the likes of China. This also means addressing some of the issues around the mass resilience and internal coherence of our own Armed Forces, as many noble Lords and noble and gallant Lords have pointed out today.

To return to what we mean by deterrence, we must also look at our society and its willingness to defend our values—or, as the report puts it, the human aspects of war. According to a Times survey in recent weeks, Gen Z—of which I have a few living with me—say that they would not want to go to war. We cannot know that for sure, but we can know that a divided, unresilient society that has forgotten the price of peace is unlikely to unite under a common purpose.

I end by paying tribute to the sacrifices that the people of Ukraine have made and continue to make for their freedom since the Russian invasion of their country just over three years ago. I find their determination and courage humbling and a reminder of the values that we hold dear but are often complacent about. We must remain firm in our loyalties; they are not, and never will be, to Putin’s Russia.

Ukraine

Baroness Fall Excerpts

Friday 25th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fall (Con)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the sacrifices that the people of Ukraine have made and continue to make for their freedoms since the invasion over two and a half years ago. I find their determination and courage humbling and a reminder of the values that we hold dear but are often complacent about.

I pay tribute too to the series of UK Governments for their sustained leadership and steadfast support for the people of Ukraine in meeting their military needs and addressing their humanitarian support; to those who welcomed Ukrainian families into their homes and communities; and to all in the West who give their support, with the higher price of bread or the cost of heating our homes. It has been a long time since we paid the price of peace in terms of our own personal sacrifices.

That realisation has also focused us in the West on our political values. It is because of Putin’s aggressive actions that we now have a reinvigorated and expanded NATO. Who would have thought that Finland, staunchly neutral for decades, would join NATO or indeed that Sweden would do so, proving that Putin’s strategy against NATO expansion has failed? He has effected the very thing that he most wished to avoid—and now there is the potential of Ukrainian membership of the EU too, an important step, along with the enlargement of NATO, towards marking a line in the sand for potential Russian aggression and whatever might happen down the line. In all the talk of peace, not least from President Zelensky, peace can only be as successful as the security guarantees that we place beside it. Otherwise, Putin will bank his battle gains, take his time and come back for more, as he did after Crimea.

We enter the most strategically difficult phase of the war in Ukraine off the back of a very tough year. A re-elected and reinvigorated Putin, supported by an economy on a war footing, strengthened through his alliance of rogue friends around North Korea and also China, has seen Russia on the offensive. Navalny’s death at the start of the year was a stark reminder of how those who oppose the regime are treated but also, in Navalny’s bravery, that Putin does not speak for all Russia. We hear that message loud and clear in the words of his widow.

Strategically, the worry is that Putin eyes up the longer term, hoping that western resolve will begin to wane as the cost of a third year of war focuses minds and inflationary pressures hover. It is a year of elections, especially when the USA has begun to question American resolve and the known unknown is: what happens if Trump wins? Will the Americans scale back their support or even just leave the war to Europe? What does that mean for us?

What can we do? We can keep making the argument, as my noble friends Lord Ahmad and Lord Cameron—the former Foreign Secretary—so skilfully did, that Ukraine is value for money for the Americans if we are intent on the West winning. To let Putin win would be the wrong thing not only for Ukraine but for Europe and the West. That means the USA, and it will play into the hands of those of our enemies—Iran, North Korea and China—who want the West to look weak and be weak. It is not a coincidence that Putin invaded after we left Afghanistan.

We are days from the US election, the result of which is critical to the future of Ukraine but also of Europe and the West. We cannot know what Putin will do next, with a militarised Russia selling its oil and gas east, eyeing its neighbours in near Russia and leveraging its influence widely as it chairs the BRICS this week. Russia’s ambition should not be underestimated but nor should Western resolve. Given the very fact that Putin sought a quick victory over Ukraine and today remains in a costly, intractable war, we must remember that although Ukraine is not appearing to win that war, nor is Putin. It falls to us in Europe to be prepared to step up. That means working with our European allies to prepare and to talk to the public, as the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, said, about how and why we pay the price of peace. I hope that the Minister will pass on the resolve of this Chamber today.