UK Strategy Towards the Arctic (International Relations and Defence Committee Report)

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to participate in today’s proceedings and to have the opportunity to contribute to the debate on this report. Given the distinguished membership of the committee that produced it—not least the chair the noble Lord, Lord Ashton of Hyde, whom I thank for his excellent introductory speech—the report’s thoroughness and forensic analysis are perhaps unsurprising, but valuable none the less.

Even the most cursory glance at the report’s structure demonstrates the breadth of its scope. It asks us to consider the UK’s role—historic and future—in respect of the Arctic. It points up the future of the Arctic as a sphere of potential great power contestation and analyses the implications of growing economic activity, consequent in part on the effects of climate change.

Mindful of the limited time I have available, and of the priority that should be accorded to the members of the committee which produced this report, my contribution will focus on a relatively small number of points, the first of which, and its effect, have to a degree already been diluted by some of the introductory remarks by the noble Lord, Lord Ashton of Hyde.

The Arctic Circle is only 380 miles north of British waters, which is only 64 miles less than the distance by road between my home in the west of Scotland and London. As the report reminds us, although the Arctic is a byword for remoteness, it is in fact extraordinarily close to our country, in terms of both geography and, much more importantly, our strategic interests.

I saw no inherent flaw in the previous Government’s expressed desire to give our foreign policy an Indo-Pacific tilt. Noble Lords will need no reminder from me that the sinews of diplomacy in that area are very often subject to strain, nor will they need to be reminded of the importance of that region in economic, political and military terms. But the report we are debating today, as well as the evidence session of 11 July 2023 in which the committee took evidence from the then Minister for the Armed Forces, James Heappey, makes it clear that there are real challenges of capacity if the UK is to maintain and increase its relationships operability in the High North.

In short, there are choices to be made. In that evidence session, Mr Heappey summed up this environment of choice very effectively, saying that:

“It is important not to specify ships”—


I say this with some trepidation in the current environment—

“to be extraordinarily capable in one environment to the exclusion of their capability in another. If we specify them to be extraordinarily capable in both environments, we will only be able to afford one, not six. There is always a balance to strike”.

That is as succinct a summary of the constraints and contextual challenges of defence spending as I have seen. Pierre Mendès-France, during his time as Prime Minister of France, repeated in speech after speech the mantra

“to govern is to choose”.

As part of the strategic defence review, currently in progress under the aegis of my noble friend Lord Robertson, we will be faced with just such choices: the allocation of finite resources to meet a multiplicity of threats across different spheres.

Given the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO membership, we have new obligations in the Arctic and the High North. As paragraph 105 of the report makes clear, we are now in the position of applying our NATO security guarantees under Article 5 to a new landmass of significant size. While I think interoperability between the Finnish, Swedish and NATO forces should be pretty straightforward, a capacity issue remains. Here, we have a challenge significantly greater, in some senses, than any other NATO allies because of our near unique capabilities and the demands of our geographical position.

As the report identifies, only the UK and US have the capability to conduct nuclear submarine patrols under the ice cap. Russia has made substantial investments into its northern fleet and we know, for instance, that, in 2019, 10 Russian submarines ran a drill of a size unprecedented since the Cold War, testing their ability to breach the GIUK gap without detection.

We know too that Russia’s latest maritime doctrine places the Arctic above both the Pacific and Atlantic as the highest priority region. It is unfortunately clear that, in the medium term at least, it seems unlikely that we will be able to return to our classic post-Cold War aspiration of the Arctic as an area of “high co-operation and low tension”. Indeed, the best way to abate the tension—or at least to mitigate its possible consequences—is to ensure maximal co-operation between the UK and its allies in the region. It seems clear that this will only be possible if we assign this theatre an importance that corresponds with the new risks present within it.

I have only been able to touch on the breadth of those risks, but among the other factors I do not have time to enumerate in any depth, I would mention President Xi’s openly expressed ambition to make China a “polar great power” and the see-sawing asymmetrical relationship between China and Russia that may allow the former to use the latter as a proxy for its own ambitions.

Complicating all these strategic calculations is the insidious threat of climate change, the effects of which are manifesting themselves in the Arctic at several times the average global rate. The Arctic states and the UK will need to consider their response to an Arctic that presents new commercial opportunities, as well as a different range of security threats.

Most topically, we have seen the President-elect insist that he should be allowed to buy Greenland for national security purposes. Though, as ever, there is a shadow of farce hanging over this pronouncement, it is clear that the incoming US Administration will be placing greater emphasis on strategy in the High North.

Although I concur with the report in thinking it unlikely that the Arctic will become a theatre of military conflict, it describes in compelling terms the opportunities that the changing character of the Arctic affords to our strategic adversaries who wish to operate in the grey zone of hostility.