Strategic Defence Review 2025

Lord Tugendhat Excerpts

Friday 18th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tugendhat (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, on his review, and welcome back the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, whose writings over the years have done so much to influence my own thinking on this subject and others.

Given the time available, it is possible to deal with only one or two subjects in this review, and I will deal with just two. The first is to take up the Prime Minister’s words in his introduction, when he says:

“A step-change in the threats we face demands a step-change in”


Britain’s

“defence to meet them”.

That is a theme many other noble Lords have spoken on, but it is actually only half the story. I am not even sure that it is the most important half of the story, because there has also been a step-change in the position of our great ally the United States, on whom we, like other European countries, have depended for our ultimate defence ever since the war.

President Trump has said many things about the United States and NATO, and he said many things about the United States and European defence, but one thing is absolutely clear: he does not see the world in the same way we do, and it is not now possible to rely on the US commitment to our defence under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, as we have done in the past. That means that, regardless of the threats we face, to which the Prime Minister refers, and regardless of whether Russia is a major, potential or actual threat, we can no longer assume that we will always be fighting alongside the Americans. That in itself requires a massive military expenditure, given the extent to which our Armed Forces would at present be incapable of mounting significant military operations without American support.

Other Europeans are in the same boat and recognise that fact, and we are working closely with them. I congratulate the Government on the way in which they have repaired relationships with Germany, France and our other European allies. To the extent that we and our European allies spend and prepare more and make ourselves more self-sufficient, we will in fact be encouraging the Americans to play a larger part rather than discouraging them. Whatever the truth of the matter, it is essential that we do everything we can to keep the Americans on board and closely involved.

My second point is of a very different order. Whether there will be another crisis that might lead to war, let alone another war, we cannot know, but we do know that our critical national infrastructure of pipelines, fibre-optic cables, wind turbines and IT networks is under constant threat. We also know from the review itself that what it terms the cyber and electromagnetic domain is

“contested by adversaries every day: the United Kingdom is in constant confrontation with adversaries in cyberspace, defending national infrastructure”.

Many other noble Lords have referred to that.

In this as in other areas, we will and do of course work closely with our NATO allies to the east and south of us; but what of neutral Ireland to the west of us, through whose territorial waters and territory the vast bulk of transatlantic cables pass? As noble Lords know, Ireland spends little on defence, has very small Armed Forces and has no submarines. Therefore, my question to the Government is: will our western approaches be as sufficiently protected as those to the east and south of us? If not, can that be fixed? I would be interested to know the Government’s views on this point.

Ukraine

Lord Tugendhat Excerpts

Friday 25th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tugendhat (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Spellar, to this House and congratulating him on his maiden speech. I had the pleasure of getting to know him some years ago, when we were both on a delegation to Washington, and look forward to hearing more from him in the months and years ahead.

I turn to the war in Ukraine. It is impossible at present to say that either side, Russia or Ukraine, has been the victor. Russia has clearly gained far more territory but that is a far cry from its original aim of taking over the whole country in a matter of weeks. By comparing what it set out to do with what it actually has done, it is fair to say that Ukraine has had the better of the battle. Russia’s army has been shown up as incompetent and its navy has lost control of the Black Sea. Russia has become the junior partner in its alliance with China and, as the presence of North Korean troops demonstrates, it is having to turn to countries which it would once have regarded as satellites to help it keep its army in the field. All in all, Ukraine has done remarkably well.

We are now at a tipping point. Both sides face increasing difficulty maintaining the supply of troops they need. We have seen that in the case of Russia, but there are also newspaper reports about the problems the Ukrainians are having getting people to join the army. It is rather like the press gangs that operated at the time of Nelson’s navy, going round trying to pick up people in the streets and make them join the navy.

Ukraine suffers from the additional disadvantage that its infrastructure is being steadily degraded to the detriment of its military capability, its economic power and, above all, its social cohesion. The question for Ukraine, which comes through very clearly in newspaper reports from that country and from what one sees on the television, is no longer how much territory it can regain but how much it can hold on to. In these circumstances, it is for the Ukrainians to decide what they should try to do. It is not for us to tell them when they should make peace or the terms on which they should do so; it is for the Ukrainians to make those decisions for themselves.

There are, however, three things that Ukraine’s allies, including ourselves, should do. One is to keep up the flow of arms while they continue to fight, and to consider what other arms might be necessary in order to secure the battlefield advantage. Secondly, it is at the same time very important indeed that we should make clear the limits of what we are prepared to do, so that the Ukrainians’ decisions are not based on any false assumptions about the help they might receive. That might well be difficult to do. Thirdly, we must pledge generous help once the fighting stops, in order to rebuild their economy and defence capability. They must know that we, their western allies, will stand behind them in peace and in war and seek to safeguard their security.

In my view, however, this does not mean joining NATO. We think of NATO as a defensive alliance, but we must understand that the Russian people—I emphasise, the Russian people—regard it as a hostile military pact aimed at them. They have been confirmed in that view by the alliance’s expansion eastwards ever since the unification of Germany. One does not have to entirely accept the argument that the Russians were misled on this point at the time of unification and promised that NATO would not expand; but one has to understand that, to the Russians, something that ended at the German border has now been expanded to their border and appears, to them, to be hostile. That provides Putin constantly with the arguments he needs to justify his aggression to the Russian people and to persuade them to support his war, and so it would for his successors. In any case, talk of joining NATO is counterproductive, since clearly, a number of NATO members would veto any suggestion of Ukrainian membership. Therefore, talk of NATO makes it harder to reach a settlement in Ukraine and is disruptive to the alliance.