Defence: Continuous At-Sea Deterrent

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

My Lords, during the 1980s in particular, I wrote, lectured and spoke extensively in support of a policy of nuclear deterrence—helped hugely, as so many were, by the late, lamented Sir Michael Quinlan, whose memorial lecture I, like others, should have attended this evening. I tried to think through traditional jus in bello criteria in relation to the special characteristic of nuclear weapons in the context of the Cold War. With much spiritual fear and moral trembling, I argued that a policy of deterrence was compatible with Christian conscience. But hearing the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, refer to nuclear weapons as a political weapon, I have to remind myself that he knows much better than I do that they remain weapons, and for deterrence to be credible the enemy must think there are occasions when they could be used, which means that we actually have to have a targeting policy that is rational, credible and operates within ethical boundaries. We should remind ourselves that we are talking about weapons which might have to be used, and I was prepared to defend that. But we need to ask rigorously whether what was necessary at that time is still the case, or whether the modern context is so different that we really need to rethink the whole issue of Trident.

First, of course, at that time we were faced with the Soviet Union, a ruthless totalitarian state, but one organised as a state with a government and a recognisable command and control system. The main enemy now, as we know, is not a state: it is a variety of terrorist organisations which can overtake territory—as they did in Afghanistan—and the entity known as Daesh, but which, for the most part, operate clandestinely. Their objective is to arouse terror among people hostile to their purpose with random explosives and suicide bombs. They operate in cells, not for the most part in states as such.

The nature of the adversary and the methods used are totally different from the situation during the Cold War. The adversary then, however ruthless, was rational, and that is why deterrence worked. For the first time in human history it could not conceivably have been in the interests of either side to have had a direct confrontation, and since both sides were capable of rational calculation, they knew that, and we had a nuclear stalemate. The enemy today is not interested in rational calculation. Terrorist cells faced with the threat of nuclear weapons would have a bunker mentality. They would not be deterred from what they were planning by anything that we might threaten. So we have to ask whether the continual possession of Trident is really serving any rational purpose in the particular circumstances of our time, where the main threat comes from terrorist groups.

There arises the question of whether we still have an assured second strike capability, the long-stop of our nuclear policy. With the rapid development of cyber warfare and other technologies, it is not realistic to think that submarines can remain in the ocean undetected for ever. The noble Lord, Lord West, has assured the House both this evening and on many other occasions that when at sea, our nuclear submarines cannot be detected by any developments in cyber warfare. I am simply not so sanguine that some new other technology will not be discovered that can render them vulnerable. I do not believe that they can remain invulnerable for ever. Whatever their command and control system, it is in principle open to being discovered and degraded by advancing technologies. The noble Lord, Lord West, knows the bottom of the ocean a great deal better than I do, but I suggest to him that the whole of history and development of modern science goes against what he says. Nothing stands still, and I predict that within a decade or two, technological developments will render nuclear weapons obsolete—if not worse.

It is true that we live in a notoriously uncertain and unpredictable world in which malignant forces will continue to operate. It is, as a number of noble Lords have emphasised, an extremely dangerous world. A resurgent Russia has modernised its nuclear weapons. Perhaps that does support the case for retaining a deterrent of some kind as part of a NATO strategy for the time being, but we know that the present life of our nuclear fleet has some 18 years still to go. We have been assured a number of times in the debate that all the reports show that no alternative is cheaper or better, but I am sorry that we have not heard more about this. Last night I was speaking to one of our leading thinkers, who said that we could keep some kind of deterrent going for the foreseeable future at a much lower cost.

The main thrust of my argument is that in a world where the principal threat comes from terrorist cells and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, and in which advances in cyber and other technologies could rapidly make nuclear weapons obsolete, we need to think beyond the deterrence which worked so well in the Cold War. If, for now, we do need to retain some kind of deterrence capability, we need to explore other alternatives even more thoroughly than we have so far. As the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, emphasised—the point was taken up by other noble Lords—we need a strong and highly resourced conventional force. I do not believe, with due respect to the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, and the noble Lord, Lord Sterling of Plaistow, that that should come from some kind of diversion of our foreign aid budget. We need a strong, capable and well-resourced capacity to meet the kind of threats present in the modern world. I also believe that many more resources should be put into cyber and counter-cyber warfare and cutting-edge modern technologies.

One of the real worries at a time like this is our being too complacent about Trident acting as a kind of insurance policy for ever; it will not. It is absolutely certain that it cannot, because the world moves on and we need think beyond that to whatever may be necessary for the immediately foreseeable future.

Iraq Inquiry

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

I opposed the Iraq War and in my speech of 26 February 2003, at col. 260 in Hansard, I set out the reasons why, in my judgment, it failed three of the just war criteria for a morally justified military intervention.

However, I begin by saying that I believe the decision to go to war taken by the Prime Minister and Parliament at the time was an honourable one and was honourably made. It was in my view a tragic misjudgment, but it was not criminal. Mr Blair is now being pilloried in the press, but I suspect that if the intervention had turned out to be a long-term success rather than a very short-lived military one, some of those now vilifying him would have been praising him as a successful war leader. Tragically, instead of stability, we have had sectarian strife, massive displacement of people and terrible casualties. It is only fair, however, to note that there was no easy way in which the situation in Iraq was going to be resolved and what is happening in Syria is a literally deadly reminder of what can happen when matters are left just to take their course without an external invasion by major powers.

That said, however, the worst aspect of the Iraqi intervention for me has always been the failure to prepare properly for the aftermath of the military victory, as highlighted so powerfully in the Chilcot report. A Roman emperor on his deathbed was alleged to have given his sons three pieces of advice: “Don’t quarrel among yourselves, pay your soldiers well and despise everyone else”. Leaving aside the last point, the invasion failed dismally on the first two counts. There were entirely contradictory signals coming from those in charge in the United States, not least on the troop levels that would be necessary. Then there was the disastrous decision to let 400,000 Iraqi soldiers loose into the community, many with access to weapons, leaving the country in a state of virtual anarchy. A more properly realistic policy would have been to offer to double the pay of those in the Iraqi Army, leaving the process of de-Baathification to take place over a much longer period.

I would now like to look much more closely at how some of the just war criteria apply in the light of the Chilcot judgments. I do so because of future lessons that might be learned about the application to modern warfare. First, as Chilcot says:

“We have concluded that the UK chose to join the invasion of Iraq before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted. Military action at that time was not a last resort”.

What is important to spell out for the future, however, is that last resort is very much a matter of judgment and it cannot mean waiting for ever. In fact, a malevolent enemy will use every delaying trick in the book to retain and strengthen their position, with time usually being on their side. In theory, you can always go on negotiating, but that could be fatal. In practice, if an enemy is to be confronted, action has to be taken when it has the maximum chance of success.

For that reason, I am not altogether easy about the phrase in the Chilcot report,

“before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted”,

because with Saddam Hussein, there was never going to be a peaceful means of disarming him. Like the intelligence community that advised the Government, I believed it likely that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, although they had not been found at the time; and that, in any case, he certainly intended to develop them if he possibly could. Although I believed that to be the case, I still took the view that the less hazardous course in 2003 was to continue the policy of containment with its no-fly zones, which was working very well. I did so in part because I did not believe that at that point there was sufficient significant international consensus for military action. This leads on to the whole question of legality.

Chilcot declined to comment on the legality of the war—wisely, in my view. In fact, there was reputable neutral opinion at the time which said that military intervention was justified under Resolution 1441, even without a second UN resolution. The point I wish to make is that legality may not be enough. The relevant just war criterion here is that there must be proper authority. In the modern world, we rightly look to the Security Council of the UN to provide that authority but, as the late, lamented Sir Michael Quinlan showed so persuasively at the time in his contrast of the intervention in Kosovo with that in Iraq, although the former had no UN resolution to justify it, it had the kind of international consensus which morally authorised it in a way that the Iraq invasion did not. In the case of Iraq, although a case could be made out for its legality, it lacked the authority of a true international consensus. That is the lesson we need to bear in mind for the future. That is why my view then was that we should have continued the successful policy of containment, working towards greater consensus and, as we see in retrospect, much more thorough planning for the period following a military victory.

The other just war criteria that I wish to discuss very briefly is that there must be a reasonable chance of success. This poses a sharp question as to what counts as success. The military campaign was highly successful but, as Chilcot emphasises, the wider goal of a just and ordered Iraq has been for the most part a terrible failure.

However, the question of success goes much further even than that. The Iraq invasion took place in a world in which the main threat—then, as now—was terrorism. The struggle against terrorism is not just a matter of military victories or even achieving ordered government: it is a struggle of hearts and minds against a twisted ideology. This means that every action must be judged as to whether it is going to further or frustrate that goal—that kind of success. An invasion led by a US-led coalition in a deeply suspicious Middle East was problematic from the first in its capacity to arouse and reinforce that ideology—and, as we have seen, to reinforce its strength around the world. This did not rule invasion out but ought to have been much more in the minds of the planners.

There are many lessons to be learnt from what has gone so badly wrong. My concern, then and now, is the application of traditional just war criteria, which I still think are highly relevant to every possible conflict in the modern world. With all due respect to the noble and very scholarly Lord, Lord Morgan, they actually go back to St Augustine. They are highly applicable in the modern world but need to be applied with a proper sensitivity to the conditions of modern warfare, as I have tried to suggest in one or two places.

Europe: Renegotiation

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Courtown]

My Lords, the noble Lord, with his great parliamentary skills, asked whether, if my right honourable friend the Prime Minister is successful in all his negotiations, all Ministers will support that. I am sure they will.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

I welcome the Statement and particularly the conciliatory tone of the Prime Minister’s letter. I, too, will probe the noble Earl a little about exactly what is meant by “closer union” in the phrase,

“we want to end the United Kingdom’s obligation to work towards an ‘ever closer union’”.

In his letter, the Prime Minister sets out various ways in which closer union is clearly desirable, for example steps towards a single digital market and a capital markets union. Everyone, particularly the Government, agrees that we want much more unity in our policy on immigration and refugees. I hope the Government also agree that we want a much greater coming to one mind on defence and foreign policy. If we want to work closer and closer together on all these aspects of major policy, what exactly is being rejected in this phrase?

[The Earl of Courtown]

My Lords, the noble and right reverend Lord is quite right. There are many issues that have been an advantage, but we still want to halt the constant flow of powers to Brussels, including by ensuring a stronger role for national Parliaments, dealing with the concept which the noble and right reverend Lord mentioned. It is interesting that, in late October, Frans Timmermans, the First Vice-President of the European Commission, said, on BBC Radio 4:

“If I understand correctly, what the British Government want is to say: ‘We don’t want this, others might want this and it’s up to them, but we don’t want to be forced into an ever-closer union in the sense of more and more integration’. I would say to that: ‘Fair enough, there’s nobody who will tell you that you are forced into integration with other European countries’”.