Russia: Baltic States

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Robathan]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of Russia’s current strategic objectives in the Baltic states.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Earl Howe) (Con)]

My Lords, Russia’s activity around the territory of our allies, including the Baltic states, is designed to test the responses of NATO members. As set out in the 2015 strategic defence and security review, Russia’s behaviour will remain hard to predict. Though highly unlikely, there is the possibility that it may feel tempted to act aggressively against NATO allies. Our response, with NATO and EU partners, includes promoting access to independent Russian language media, enhanced forward presence and air policing.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

I commend Her Majesty’s Government’s robust response through NATO, although we should all be rather concerned about seeming paralysis in the United States because of the presidential election. Those of us who are old enough to remember the Cold War will view the actions of Russia with very real concern, be it the 2008 invasion of Georgia, the Crimean annexation, the intervention in Ukraine, leading to the downing of an aircraft by Russian missiles, the bombing of Syria and Aleppo and, of course, not one mile from here on the streets of London, the murder of Alexander Litvinenko. Given the increasingly aggressive posturing of Russia in the Baltic, does the Minister think we should perhaps revisit last year’s SDSR? Perhaps our response, to which he referred, should be to look to increase defence spending, not just in the United Kingdom but particularly across the rest of NATO.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, my noble friend has made some very important points and he is right. The UK is leading the way in defence expenditure. We have committed to the NATO 2% target and, during this Parliament, a 0.5% real-terms increase in the defence budget. However, he is right that spending across the alliance is still too low. Having said that, the alliance is making good progress. There are now five allies spending 2% of GDP on defence, an increase from three before the pledge. Twenty allies have increased defence spending in real terms and eight have put plans in place to work towards reaching the 2% guideline for defence spending, which demonstrates a clear political will. The issue now is to translate the political will into actions.