The Ukraine Effect (European Affairs Committee Report)

Lord Godson Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Godson (Con)]

My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, for affording us the opportunity to discuss the committee’s report of last January. I too welcome this nuanced piece of work, which invalidates the idea that Brexit consigned the UK to a peripheral role in the security of Europe.

I was struck by the report’s implicit and explicit references to the enduring UK influence in the affairs of the continent, long after our departure from the EU. To me at least, this report is an important recognition that Europe is not the EU and the EU is not Europe. Indeed, some years ago I had the pleasure of reviewing the book of the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, Hard Choices: What Britain Does Next, in the New Statesman—published, of course, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I am glad in the context of this report that some of his darkest fears in that book have not been vindicated subsequently. The subtitle is What Britain Does Next; Britain has done a great deal since 2022 in this regard, and it is a good thing that the report that the noble Lord and his fellow committee members have produced has acknowledged that.

Indeed, there are two stories to tell here about the UK’s involvement in Europe since February 2022. Alongside that of UK-EU co-operation, there is also the UK’s hyperactive—there is no other word for it—European policy before and after the Russian invasion. We should note that the UK-Ukraine-Poland trilateral, which provided Kyiv with military aid and training right before the invasion, and we also of course recall the rapid response of the UK-led Joint Expeditionary Force, which convened a leaders’ summit only just before that Russian invasion. That is a record to be proud of.

I also note in chapter 2, paragraph 41, it observes that the UK is

“nimbler and swifter in imposing sanctions”

by virtue of not being tethered to the EU’s unanimity requirement for action. In chapter 2, paragraph 33, one witness concludes that two years of trial and error have left us with a

“very well thought-through and effective legal framework for the imposition of sanctions”—

a fact which rather controverts the too often fashionable fear that post-Brexit Britain has somehow become deficient in the rule of law. Chapter 3, paragraph 117, provides a welcome tribute to how the UK has consistently encouraged Kyiv’s allies, in the words of one witness,

“to push out the boundaries of what is possible”.

The report should also be praised for conceding that the EU is often not the most effective multilateral convenor of Ukraine’s “coalition of the willing”—to use a term of art. As the report notes in chapter 3, paragraphs 118-19, the supply of military aid tends to be orchestrated on a bilateral basis or by the US-led Ramstein group of 57 nations.

Nevertheless, it needs to be said that the committee’s own report in some ways does not, for my taste, reflect the full complexity of the picture, for on occasions it privileges the EU above some more effective forums. It proposes a new

“administrative arrangement with the European Defence Agency”,

despite the testimony from the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Radek Sikorski, that the agency has

“not produced anything of value”

in its 20-year history. The committee also does not amplify Sikorski’s noteworthy suggestion—coming also from one other witness—that the EU-US Trade and Technology Council be expanded to include the UK and others, which of course bears more than a family resemblance to the old CoCom of the Cold War era, which proved to be so effective in that epoch.

There is also the broad consideration of the EU’s increasingly protectionist approach to the defence industry. This inclination endangers our transatlantic weapons and munitions productions and thus risks undermining NATO itself. It is not remotely clear to me how the UK stands to benefit from such a development. How might entry into such an insular industrial fortress have impinged on our freedoms to join admirable arrangements such as AUKUS and the GCAP initiatives, which bring our global influence and military heft to bear on our own behalf, and that of Europe and world security interests? In this connection, will the Minister give the House her reflections on how things have changed since the publication of the report in January and what she sees as the enduring limitations of the EU’s role as described in the committee’s report earlier this year?

Indeed, in this connection, one of the things hanging over the deliberations of this House, as has been stated, is how the report’s recommendations stand up in light of the return of Donald Trump to the White House. This is viewed by some as a reason to align more closely with the EU. Of course, as has been noted, the policy of this Administration is not a done deal, and we must not let perhaps some of our darkest fears turn into self-fulfilling prophecies. The policy of this new Administration is a work in progress, and it is surely for the UK to make the case to the next Administration that Ukraine constitutes a perfect opportunity to showcase its peace through strength concept. Indeed, in Marco Rubio and Michael Waltz, the Secretary of State and National Security Adviser designates, Trump has chosen two of the more prominent NATO-friendly figures in the contemporary US Republican national security firmament.

The squeamishness that we hear about the aspects of the Trump Administration’s apparent approach is not surprising, but we must engage. The Foreign Secretary was perceptive and early money in his outreach to the GOP in the United States, long before the demise of the Biden Administration, and he now states that he long predicted that there would be a Trump victory in the United States. The policy approach should surely be that of the incoming National Security Adviser, who once said, in a different time and a very different context, that it is our job in this country to get up the fundament of the White House—that is not the phrase Jonathan Powell used, but I decline to use the precise words that he used in another place and another time. Geopolitics is not for the squeamish. We yet have an opportunity to help tilt the balance in an Atlanticist direction in the new Washington.