Armed Forces: Capability

Lord Jopling Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jopling (Con)]

My Lords, realising the need for brevity, I must begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, for his admirable speech. I will make just one point. I endorse the initiative by NATO to move battalion-size battle groups into each of the three Baltic states and Poland. It is a sign that NATO has, to a limited extent, roused itself in posting around 1,000 personnel in those four countries. I certainly welcome today’s movement of United States troops into Poland, where they will take the lead, with Romania, in one of those four battle groups.

I am concerned that the deployment in the Baltic states will not come earlier than the spring. Is it not possible to hurry up that deployment, particularly of the United Kingdom-led force—with France and Denmark—in Estonia? This is urgent. There is a period ahead of us when the United States Administration, under the new President, will take—as the custom is—until the spring before the political appointments are made. Therefore, there will be a period of uncertainty.

We are all concerned—many noble Lords have spoken about this—at the continued aggressive attitude of Russia, which threatens the NATO powers. Following its outrageous behaviour in Georgia, the Crimea and Ukraine, it has relentlessly threatened the eastern border of NATO. It was, I think, the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, who referred to the large number of Russian troops along the border, the continued illegal overflight and incursions and the build-up of military resources, particularly nuclear weapons, in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.

Mr Putin will no doubt use his usual posturing to claim that the NATO four-nation battle groups are threatening Russia. He is, as we know, a master of disinformation, but I cannot understand how he might argue that this purely defensive move—which it is—can be construed as threatening Russia. Certainly 1,000 troops in each of the Baltic countries and Poland could hardly be suggested to be an invasion force. What the four battle groups will be is a warning trigger that any incursions by the Russian military, or even their “little green men”, will clearly trigger the Article 5 arrangements and all the consequences of that. I believe that Mr Putin must realise that any repetition of his Ukraine adventures in the territories of NATO members will lead to an immediate, full-hearted response. Surely this admittedly small but very important disposition of troops will cause Mr Putin to hesitate. He would fail to do so at his peril.