Defence Policy: Deterrence
Lord Balfe Excerpts(3 weeks ago)
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Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, for initiating this debate, and I hope that the Hansard is sent to the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen. Of course, deterrence must remain a cornerstone of our defence policy, otherwise there is no reason to have one at all. But it is also important to realise that other countries have a very good grasp of our defence capacity. I do not know whether other noble Lords watched the American series, “Corridors of Power”, a PBS production, from which you could see that the Americans had a much clearer grasp of the limitations of European power than we appear to have.
We need to define much more clearly what we wish to do, then we need to find the resources to do it. I am not terribly impressed with the 2.5% or 3% argument. What we need to look at is what we need and a pathway for achieving it. I was struck last Friday in our debate when the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham, pointed out that we had given Ukraine £172 million-worth of equipment, but that it would cost £2.7 billion to replace it. That shows how out of date it was, but it also shows how much money we need to spend to bring our forces up to a level where they can do their job. That is far more important than percentages.
We need to define clearly what our role is in defence. First, it is clearly to defend the home territory. Secondly, I suggest that we need to keep our garrison in the Falklands. Thirdly, we need to keep our bases in Cyprus, which are quite valuable for operations in the Gulf. Finally, we need to pull our resources together with our Baltic allies to look at both the High North, referred to by my noble friend Lord Harlech, and the Baltics, which are within Europe but certainly threatened by Russia. Only by getting together Finland, Sweden and all the countries around the Baltic, including Poland, Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark, are we going to be able to put forward a credible defence. We have to work together and exercise together; we have to have joint exercises and revive the Arctic Council as a viable organisation to talk to the Russians, but also to protect the High North.
Finally, cables and electronic warfare are part of the future, but I often feel that they are seen as an add-on rather than as a key part of our defence capacity, as they should be.
Ukraine
Lord Balfe Excerpts(3 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, I begin by welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Spellar, to the House. I have known him for a long time. When I was in a different party, we used to go to the London Labour Party conference, where he would stride up to the platform and announce, “John Spellar, EETPU”, at which point there was sustained booing before he had said a single word. I am sure that the noble Lord will contribute vigorously to this House.
I am not part of the consensus here, as noble Lords might realise by now. We need to stop this war and start talking, preferably from our present position which is one of moderate strength. We do not want to talk in the aftermath of a downturn in American support when Putin thinks, quite rightly, that the whole game is over in his favour.
As for Storm Shadow, all it will do is prolong the war. They will be able to hit further into Russian territory, and the Russians will retaliate. As many Members will know, I have quite a few Russian friends. I had one here to tea yesterday. She tells me that morale in Russia is very high and the war economy is actually going very well. One of her relatives has taken advantage of the IKEA company withdrawing from Moscow to set up an IKEA lookalike in their city. So do not let us be under the impression that the Russians are going to collapse—they are not.
I draw attention to this week’s meeting in Kazan. The reason why the leaders of India, South Africa, Pakistan and Sri Lanka were in Kazan, not Samoa, is that Kazan matters to them and, frankly, Samoa does not. It is as simple as that. One of the most significant developments in Kazan is the bringing forward of the new international payments system that has been devised by a number of the BRICS countries. That could fundamentally shift the balance of power in the financial West, and one of the reasons is that if we want to freeze their assets and give away their money, then they are not going to put any more here. It is as simple as that. When countries like Abu Dhabi are willing to set up a banking system to challenge us with a lot of support, that is what will happen.
Something that has hardly been mentioned in this debate is the rest of Europe. There are severe reservations in Germany as to where this effort is going to lead and whether it is worth it; there is an election there next year, and that is going to be a major issue. The French are not that far on board, and Giorgia Meloni in Italy is most certainly looking for a way out.
So let us get real. I shall give one example. A few days ago, Cardinal Zuppi, the Vatican representative to the conflict, met Sergei Lavrov in Moscow and they discussed the conflict. The Vatican position is that there should be negotiations and that Russia must be included. A Ukrainian peace plan that does not include Russia is, frankly, not worth anything at all. Cardinal Parolin, the Secretary of State in the Vatican, has made it very clear that he is willing to act as a good envoy between the two sides.
We should be looking at things like that, because we are not going to win; Napoleon found that out, and Hitler found that out. I am sorry to say to those people who think we are that the Russian people are behind Putin, as are many in the third world, who see this as our little fight. I say to our Front Bench: try to get peace talks going. That is what is needed, because there is no such thing as victory in this case. What is victory? We do not know, because there is no such thing.
Strategic Defence Review
Lord Balfe Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, for initiating this debate. I had a conversation with him before Christmas and suggested that this might be a good idea.
I would first like to look at the threat picture. We know roughly what it is, but the biggest threat picture is of the division of the world into two very heavily armed camps, with one, the Russians, getting increasingly close to the Chinese. We are in danger of ending up with Chinese bases in the Arctic if we cannot manage to get some sort of peace talks going—read the recent report of this House. Then we will be in even more difficulty.
The defence review says that we take as granted our membership of NATO, so why do we not start off with that? The war in Ukraine is in a non-NATO country. It is undoubtedly illegal, but it was not unprovoked. Noble Lords can shake their heads, but while this war carries on and until we can manage to get it under control, we are not going to get anything that resembles a peaceful solution in Europe. Our first aim should be to secure the defence of our NATO allies. In particular, that means to look at how we can work with the new NATO partners to guarantee the security of the Baltic states. They have a right to expect us to help with their security, and that should be our number one priority.
Beyond that, we can debate and discuss, but we have to realise that we are dealing with a number of countries that are fundamentally unstable and have internal conflicts which, by definition, rule them out of being members of NATO. I would hope that we can concentrate on the Baltics and make it possible for the Baltic states to feel more comfortable than they clearly do; that we will look at how we police effectively the Suwałki Gap; and look at how we relate to the countries that are already in NATO.
Looking at another of these headings, I note the point about our support and the need for proper and efficient defence forces. I really hope that this review will look at the outsourcing of recruitment. I have what is supposedly an Army recruiting office at the top of the road in which I live. Most of the time it is closed; I have never actually seen anyone in it. I wonder whether this scheme is delivering any value for money. Overall, philosophically, I am opposed to outsourcing. It is generally done for the wrong reasons—to try to save money—and not for the reasons of promoting better efficiency and the like. I hope that we will look at that and at the way in which we can get people into the Armed Forces.
I live in the city of Cambridge: we have a very large Russian and Ukrainian population there. They get on very well together. They are basically the sons of the rich of those two countries who have all managed to get out, thanks to daddy’s money. They have got themselves to Cambridge where they have set up both a Russian society—the secretary lives a few doors up from me—and a Ukrainian society. The interesting thing is that the two societies get on very well together. We are becoming a sort of base. It is rather like when I was at university: we were flooded with Americans who were dodging the Vietnam War. Now Cambridge has plenty of Russians and Ukrainians who are, let us say, making themselves scarce, so we have a challenge in that direction.
I know that I have made my final point before and that it is not popular, but Russia is a European country and we somehow have to work out how to bring it back. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, that the Russians and the Indians are getting closer and closer together. Far from India coming our way, Russia is building up a dependence on its energy within India. The energy is starting to go south instead of west. Mr Modi is playing a very clever game in many ways, but he is not playing a game of being particularly friendly to us, because he sees the advantage to India in being friendly to Russia and getting closer to the stans and the former southern Soviet republics. We need to remember that.
Politics, after all, is about self-interest. People often tell me that the United States is our great ally and that we are its favourite child. They never say that in Washington; this is a myth that we pursue. Countries have foreign policies to better their own self-interests. I hope that this review will look at how we can better the self-interests of this country, rather than pretending that we are doing it for other people.
King’s Speech
Lord Balfe Excerpts(3 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, and the noble Lord, Lord Coaker. I do not think there will be any different response to my ideas from the new Front Bench than there was from the last Front Bench, but I keep trying because I believe they are right.
I shall talk mainly about NATO. I am pleased that my friend—I am not sure whether I am allowed to call him that—the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, is here. We have to remember that Article 5 of the NATO treaty, of which we often quote the first part, says that an attack on one is an attack on all. It then goes on to say nothing about what should be done. As a senior member of a southern European navy pointed out to me, as far as his country was concerned, nothing should be done, under Article 5, if there were an attack in eastern Europe. But, of course, Ukraine is not in NATO, and the first thing I would advise is that
“Ukraine’s irreversible path to full NATO membership”.—[Official Report, Commons, 22/7/24; col. 369.]
to quote the Prime Minister, is exactly the wrong direction in which to proceed. The one thing we do not need is a lot of squabbling states carrying out their hatreds on NATO’s base. There is already far too much going on in eastern Europe with NATO members, but that can be contained. If we extend NATO membership to Ukraine, we will essentially extend it into a frozen conflict zone, because the next reality is that Russia is not going to leave Ukraine, either militarily or otherwise. The best you can hope for is a stalemate, and the only way out of a stalemate is a negotiation. You cannot bomb your way out of it.
I counsel the Government to look to a European initiative. Trump might be right: it may be about time that we looked after our own defence. In so doing, we would cease to be doing Washington’s demands all the time, because that is at the basis of this.
I note that we have said we will give £3 billion a year—pounds, not euros; I am too used to another Parliament—to Ukraine. I know politics is the language of priorities, and £3 billion is exactly the sum of money which is needed to end the two-child benefit lock, but the priorities of this Government are not children’s poverty; they are arming Ukraine and sending it lots of weapons that it can use to smash up other countries. This is not sensible, particularly if you are not going to win. The Russian Federation and its riparian states have got to learn to solve their problems and live together. You can rewrite your history and—my goodness—I have been there many times and seen how they have rewritten it to a ridiculous extent, but you cannot rewrite your geography. At the end of the day, these countries are next to each other and somehow they have to live together. If we cannot come to an agreement with the Russian Federation, we are in for a lot of trouble.
Talk of preparing for war in three years brings me on to my final point, which echoes the point made at the beginning of this debate by the noble Lord, Lord Howell. Capitalism has failed the young: many of them are unemployed, they cannot buy houses and now we are promising body bags. That is the reality of it. We will not be fighting this war; young people—our grandchildren—will be fighting this war, and they will be dying for an unwinnable cause. So I ask the new Government to think a bit more carefully than the last Government and somehow extricate us from this mess.