Armed Forces Act (Continuation) Order 2017

Baroness Jolly Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jolly (LD)]

My Lords, over the last seven decades, the liberal international order has been a bedrock for promoting global stability and prosperity. Throughout my life, this nation—outward-looking and globalist—has been at the heart of the international rules-based project. From the start, British Armed Forces, diplomats and lawyers devoted their lives’ work—and, sometimes, their lives—to build and protect the many institutions and values which are now unremarkable set pieces on the international landscape.

Those values have guided our foreign policy for generations: the rule of law; respect for human rights and the dignity of all people; and international relations driven by process, diplomacy and rules, rather than shows of aggression and force. This liberal international order has not only allowed us to bend the arc of history towards ideals we believe are right—it has striven to move the world away from the games of “great powers”, wars of aggression and the rule of the strong. The institutions that have arisen out of this post-war international order—many of which the UK helped to build and lead—have also directly benefited the lives of UK citizens.

Nowhere is this truer than when it comes to defence and security. Our leading roles in the UN Security Council and a host of other key international institutions have allowed us to shape the international discourse. NATO—and other treaty organisations designed to promote collective security—has allowed us to spend less on defence while still being able to defend ourselves and our interests abroad.

In short, international laws and institutions have made the world, on aggregate, safer and more peaceful. Overall, that world is a more tolerant, wealthy and democratic place than the world of our parents and grandparents. Britain’s place in this world has been assured, and the rules-based system has promoted the norms and values that have made that possible. That order is as much a part of our defence as our Armed Forces and intelligence services. It is not possible to calculate the immense value that we reap from them year on year. Yet we have heard many times today that this international order is under threat, and I feel it—a protective safety net for seven decades, not guaranteed to last another.

Nor is it clear that we have the capacity to defend it. It is clear that without today’s order we will not even have the capacity to defend ourselves. We must treat threats and challenges to the international system as seriously as we treat direct threats to our own security. Some of those challenges have arisen naturally. We live in an era of huge progress—the pace of change near inconceivable to the international order’s architects of the 1940s. Fast-paced developments have transformed international relations, armed conflict and the relationship between individuals and states.

Many noble Lords have spoken about developments in cyber technology which have left our infrastructure and secrets vulnerable. The expansion of the use of drones in conflict has put pressure on laws of armed conflict and human rights norms. The proliferation of technology allows individuals to threaten national interests inexpensively. If the rules-based order is to avoid slipping into irrelevance and if our place on the world stage is to be assured, we must develop new international laws—and reform old ones—to meet the challenges brought by change.

But not all of today’s challenges to our world order originate from the changing times. We must acknowledge that there are those who seek to damage and destroy the system. Vladimir Putin’s Russia has set out to aggressively delegitimise, discredit and undermine western policies and institutions, as well as the entire post-Cold War norms-based security order. International institutions and the entire European security architecture stand in the way of Russia’s strategic aims, and Moscow is determined to undermine and render them irrelevant.

At the same time, Russia is a repeat violator of international laws—be they human rights laws, laws of armed conflict or treaty laws—in its domestic actions, in its annexation of the Crimea, in Syria and across cyberspace. The noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater, pondered how to deal with the Russians, and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, had the answer: we have to start by talking to them.

But Russia is not alone. In the South China Sea, China has taken “nation building” all too literally; Syria uses chemical weapons with alarming frequency; and then there is North Korea. Other nations watch the abuses and annexations, and they wonder whether they might reap similar results with impunity. How much chipping away can the rules-based order take before it is damaged beyond repair? The rise of non-state players such as the Taliban, Boko Haram and Daesh ignores the rules-based order altogether.

However, our soft power—second to none—can get us only so far in defending those structures and laws which have kept us so safe through our lives. In 2017 it is not clear that we have the capacity to defend vital interests or deter enemies. We must acknowledge that our Armed Forces have been hollowed out, and other noble Lords have spelled this out in detail: we have spent too little on defence, taking the peace dividend for granted; that which we have spent has sometimes been spent unwisely on pet projects built for yesterday’s wars; and we face a chronic shortage of personnel—young people do not see a future with our Armed Forces as a lifelong career. We may have state-of-the-art fighter jets and capital ships but, without the men and women and funds to run them efficiently, we may struggle to defend our interests abroad.

Our Armed Forces are our national insurance policy or our pension pot. Spending today is less painful and expensive than spending when it is too late. Spending on defence in a world of international rules, international institutions and NATO is much cheaper than spending in a world without them. However, a great deal has changed since the 2015 SDSR. In the light of post-Brexit currency fluctuations, a new spending review might be in order. The risk calculus from global threats is also different. There has been a great bonfire of the post-Cold War certainties these past few years, and our procurement must be adjusted to address this. Of course, there is also Brexit, and I thank my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire for so ably describing the possible impact of our leaving the EU on our defence.

However, there is a third kind of threat to the rules-based order. Throughout the West, populists and nationalists are urging their populations to turn inward, cut ties and put themselves first—several noble Lords have alluded to the 1930s. These demands are not compatible with the globalism, the multilateralism and the idealism of shared values upon which our post-war order was built.

Brexiteers and Trumpeteers alike have railed against institutions which have secured us for decades: the EU, the WTO and NATO—all have come under fire. We must commit ourselves to a political fight to protect those institutions which keep us safe. Though an inward-looking or isolationist foreign policy may be comforting for many, the challenges that we face in today’s complex world cannot be solved by going it alone. Tomorrow’s global powers are not guaranteed to share our values and most certainly do not share our interests. Preserving institutions which promote the international rule of law and prevent the worst excesses of power politics must be as important to our defence as building new ships. Today, our building blocks of peace and security are our alliances, our global institutions and an international order which resolves most disputes without shots fired.

This is not idealism. The number of international armed conflicts has fallen decade on decade since 1945, and the number of deaths as a result of war has fallen consistently since the 1970s. Britain is a world-leading soft power and has the hard-power levers which come with permanent membership of the UN Security Council and key roles within NATO. These levers must become our “smart power” to preserve the international rules-based order. But more than that, the UK should take the lead in working to develop those institutions and rules to suit modern realities. Technologies may change but our commitment to values such as internationalism, openness, human rights and peacebuilding should not.