United Kingdom: Global Position

Baroness Neville-Jones Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Jones (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Howell, for securing this very timely debate. I congratulate noble Lord, Lord Pitkeathley, on his very enlivening and to-the-point maiden speech.

In the very short time available, I am not going to try to deliver a verdict on the UK’s global position. In light of what Mr Trump has been up to, I want to make a couple of points about the fundamentals of UK security, on which our role in the world hangs.

Since the inauguration of the 47th President of the United States, I have been more worried about what is happening than I can remember since the Cuban missile crisis, when we feared for our lives. It is not true to say that that is the case today, but I fear the growing threat to our freedoms from an aggressive and highly militarised Russia, in alliance with China. It is a different world. The UK is lucky to not be on the front line geographically, but the Kremlin’s ambassador in London has made it clear that it has the UK in its sights. We can expect, at the very least, increased espionage, cyberattacks aimed destabilising our politics, services and military capabilities, and incidents on and under the sea, as well as, potentially, more attempted assassinations.

It is a long-standing Russian policy to interfere in other people’s societies. I have no doubt that the UK can cope with this level of threat, though we need to do much more than is currently the case to strengthen the resilience of national infrastructure against attack. That is a task for not just the Government but the private sector. The imponderable question is whether this country and other European countries have the political will to generate sufficient military capability to deter overt Russian attack against the background of a much-reduced contribution to our security. Hitherto, as Europeans we have sought collectively to do just enough to keep the US on board without suggesting that we could do without it.

It is very clear that this level of effort will no longer suffice, whatever colour Administration is in office in Washington, now or in the future. What is much less clear is whether in the foreseeable future we will still be operating within the integrated framework of NATO or whether in effect the US will opt out of the Article 5 guarantee, which will also imply the removal of the nuclear umbrella and the effective end of NATO. At one level, it would be helpful to know what we are up against, but at another I dread to know the answer, which I doubt would be founded on any well thought-through American national security strategy. For all our doubts about Washington and what is going on at the moment, the Prime Minister is being well advised to present policy based on the assumption of continuing full-blooded American commitment to European security. However, as others have said, I hope that we are thinking hard about less optimistic scenarios.

What happens next in Ukraine could bring answers: this is my last point. There are several possible scenarios. It is unlikely that the Russians will flatly reject a ceasefire, through which lies an apparent path to the lifting of sanctions and the potential end of isolation, but it is doubtful that they will act in good faith. They will spin out talks to gain territory, they will make the guardrails of a ceasefire as weak as possible and they will set out to find pretexts for resuming fighting, based on claims of Ukrainian breaches. The likelihood of fighting resuming is high. Events after that could be fateful. Will the Americans back the Ukrainians hard, or will they try a Minsk? A Minsk could be the end of the road for the defence of Europe as we have known it. Credible American backing for any ceasefire is essential. On this key issue, the UK is indeed showing the leadership that this House wishes to see, and I congratulate the Government on pursuing it.