National Security Situation

Baroness Neville-Jones Excerpts

Thursday 19th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Jones (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate, who has just laid out some of the issues that we face over Syria, which are very difficult. I also welcome the tough-minded clarity that my noble friend the Minister showed in his remarks on the threat posed by Russia.

I do not envy the task faced by the modern policymaker on national security. As others have said, we face a fast-shifting scene in which there are few obvious anchorages for a country such as ours. The international scene has greatly changed since Madeleine Albright’s short-lived “unipolar moment”—do noble Lords remember that? It has moved in a direction which is to the significant disadvantage of the West—which I think is still a useful and valid term—and in ways which I think are increasingly downright hostile to some of our fundamental interests. I very much fear that movement in that direction has still further to go. The picture is sombre and dangerous.

International terrorism is with us for the foreseeable future. As the right reverend Prelate just pointed out, the Middle East is in turmoil and heading in directions which are both dangerous for it and capable of sparking much wider conflagration. We should not forget how tense and fragile that area is. Europe in particular faces immediate and increasing aggressive activity on the part of Russia, as has been well said, which has spent its national capital on developing hybrid military capability and nuclear capabilities which, in the absence of much else, it shows an alarming tendency to want to use and exploit. It intends to do us harm inside our societies as well as externally. We should not forget that national security these days has to do with the integrity of our political systems as well as our safety. Declining powers—and Russia is a declining power—can do a lot of damage on their way down.

The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, mentioned China, and I want to say a little something about that. It is the other major autocracy, but the challenge it poses is much more complex, long-term and, frankly, important, even than Russia. If we do not meet it, we will not only fundamentally change, or allow the change of, the current international power balance but undo the western-originated framework of international laws and institutions that have been built up, essentially by the West, since the Second World War and under whose umbrella we shelter today. This is, as has been well said, the international law-abiding framework that we have at the moment. I will come back to that.

In deciding how the UK should respond to the challenges that it faces, we cannot escape a fundamental question about our own behaviour as a nation: do we want to be an active player, or do we basically want to opt out? I am not really getting at Brexit with this, much as I think there are elements of it that weaken our hand, but for me two events spell out the worry that I have. The UK suffered, as we know, an unprovoked, lawless and highly dangerous attack from Russia on our domestic soil—not in some far-off place but here, in Salisbury. We received from our allies very considerable backing and a display of solidarity, which has greatly strengthened our hand in dealing with the aftermath—and aftermath there will be; we are far from finished with this story.

In this context, I wish that the National Cyber Security Centre had not waited until now to make known to a wider audience its concerns about Russian penetration of our networks, with the implicit threat of a forthcoming cyberattack on our critical national infrastructure. Cocooning people from the risks that they face until they become imminent does no service. People who live in ignorance will harbour a false sense of security, are likely to be less resilient to attack than they could and should be and will undervalue the help that they receive from others.

This is my point: the polling on the UK’s military participation in upholding the international ban on the use of chemical weapons in Syria shows uncomfortably lukewarm popular support for UK participation. I know that some people will say that that had to do with the question of consulting Parliament; that is true, but only up to a point. There are elements to it and it betokens a lack of trust in government—I am not talking about this Government, but government generally—for some time on the part of the public. It needs to be fixed by much more frank discussion than we get about the issues we face.

My worry about the polling is that it tells us that the public do not seem to see that, if the UK opts out of joining its allies in defending principles it has authored and indeed upheld in the past, it will get less in return. Solidarity is reciprocal. Mr Trump may not be the nation’s favourite President but, as has just been said, the United States’ commitment to European security upholds our freedoms and the Prime Minister is quite right to seek to get on with him. There are some fundamentals here that we should not forget, because nobody ever influenced anybody by holding their nose.

Far from opting out, this country needs to give real substance to the slogan “global Britain”. Perceptions of weakness increase the dangers we face. Being global is not primarily about new trade ties or reviving Commonwealth links, welcome as these are; it is about facing up to the real security challenges. We have done well in combating the terrorist threat and successive Governments deserve credit, though there is still much to be done on the integration front. I also endorse what has been said about the importance of policing in this context. It is not enough simply to ring-fence the counterterrorism capability in this area. We are active in helping defend the security of the NATO area against Russian provocations and harassment. Those two important contributions bear directly on our own security. But on the other hand, the UK has not been in the forefront on Ukraine, which, among other things, is about the rule of law on our own continent, and rather important. We have yet to have our cyberdefences truly tested, although I acknowledge and support the fact that serious work has been done in this area. However, we do not yet know how successful we have been.

Our growing defence relationship with France has helped us with the defence of our own shorelines and skies, but we should listen to the increasingly urgent calls of our senior officers for more money for defence. The Government tell us that it is their first duty, and my goodness, they need to make good on that. Frankly, it is hard to know where to start, but for my money I would certainly like to see a significant regrowth in the size and capability of the Royal Navy. That is because some of the greater challenges we face lie in the Far East—I come back to China. The main burden undoubtedly falls on the Americans, but there is reciprocity in all of that, and if we do not make a contribution as European allies—and we are rich enough to do so—we cannot expect the same degree of support we have had hitherto in Europe. We also need to develop our relations with countries like Japan and South Korea.

Let us be clear about what is at stake. China is a politico-military-economic challenge. Most Europeans, the UK included, have focused on China as a marketplace—import and export. But China is making an undisguised effort to become the greatest technological power in the world. The one belt, one road initiative brings a Chinese investment strategy, which includes converting debt into equity stakes in the economies of the countries along the route—with the attendant political influence that will bring—right to the borders of Europe.

Part of maintaining our autonomy is to develop our own technological capabilities, and we are well placed to compete in several areas, provided we get on with and implement an industrial strategy worthy of the name. We have to participate in the fourth industrial revolution with every sinew we have available. It is crucial in the end to our capacity to build our national security. That agenda and national prosperity are closely related.

What we should not do, however, is fail to be hard-headed about the ownership of valuable intellectual property, the handing over of which the Chinese have made a condition of entry into their market. We have to resist this, and we should focus not just on the protection of technologies with military or dual-use capabilities but on ones with transformative economic significance. The underpinning of future power is economic, as I said, and in short, we need a strategy. Do we, as allies, talk to each other about management of relations with China? I do not think so. I grant that it is not easy, given the Trump style, although some of the measures he is taking may well yield results. Long term, however, we need a western strategy, and I do not see it. That is one of the challenges to our future strength.

What I have just been talking about is not national security in the narrower politico-military sense in which it is often used, but it is about the future organisation of the world that our offspring will inherit. The West has had it good for nigh on 70 years, with our rules and our way of life being the winning model. We cannot now take that for granted. We need to defend and promote it actively, and the UK should be there, doing its bit.