NATO Summit 2018

Baroness Northover Excerpts

Tuesday 26th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, I too would like to thank the Minister for introducing this debate—even if in apparently Panglossian terms. I also pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Howell, and his committee for their examination of the upcoming NATO summit and for their individual contributions to this debate. There has been total agreement on all sides of the Chamber in terms of support for NATO and the value of the alliance to all of us. We have just heard a wide-ranging vision based on history from the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy. Yet we could not be participating in a NATO summit at a more important time for the United Kingdom.

NATO has been the bedrock of our security since the Second World War, as noble Lords have spelled out. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, put this in strongly personal terms, in relation to his family’s view of the risks of the late 1940s. Of course, he was right that NATO was born when there was a commitment to collective security. As the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, pointed out, the NATO charter commitment,

“to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation”,

of NATO countries was,

“founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law”,

and could not be more relevant today. Although one might wish to stress a greater diversity of heritage today, nevertheless the principles are clear. Yet the International Relations Committee report concludes:

“The NATO Summit takes place at a time of unparalleled international volatility and instability”.


We see that Edward Lucas, a security policy expert, is quoted in the Times as saying that,

“from a military point of view NATO has rarely looked in better shape”.

But he then goes on to say:

“Politically, it is in tatters”.


Crucially, as my noble friend Lord Campbell emphasised, NATO is a political alliance, not just a military one. America was and is central to what was devised after the Second World War to protect Europe, as the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and others emphasised. Yet it is the American President who is most likely to cause challenges at the forthcoming summit, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and other noble Lords pointed out.

The head of the Atlantic Council says that NATO is facing a,

“potential transatlantic train wreck of American making”.

He is commenting on what the noble Lord, Lord King, described as the downward spiral in international relations now. If there is any consistency about Trump, it appears to be that anything Obama supported, Trump on principle opposes. Hence Justin Trudeau, NATO, the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris climate change treaty, and multilateral trade agreements. If he can think he has solved North Korea’s nuclearisation simply by meeting its leader and then tweeting that it is all done and he can move on to other things, and if he can show his impatience with the G7 and randomly suggest that Russia should rejoin and that its actions over Crimea, for example, are simply in the past, who knows what position he will take at the NATO summit? I wish the noble Lord, Lord Judd, had been more persuasive in his conversations with John Bolton.

At the same time we have a dictatorial Russian leader who sees aggression as a way of cementing his people’s support behind him and who clearly has no compunction in seeking to take out opponents on his own or others’ soil, while seeking to destabilise the US or the EU or to play a leading role in the Syrian conflict. Nationalist and populist Governments are emerging in various parts of the world, including within NATO’s own ranks. So we face many challenges.

In the context of all that, where is the UK? As others have implied but not necessarily spelled out, Brexit is of course relevant. We seem unsure of what we want our relationship with our European neighbours to be in terms of defence, having for so long hidden the way in which we formed a complementary approach to defence—for example, with the French—as my noble friend Lord Wallace made clear. All that has been blown open as we apparently seek to go it alone. So we are at risk of having to duplicate what we did before, when we could have had strengths in certain areas and the French in others, and not both have to do the same things. But it was never politic with the right-wing press ever to say so. So we are hoist with our own petard and are now looking to do all things across the spectrum of defence in order to retain the tier 1 position that other noble Lords have referred to.

At the same time, the cost of defence procurement has gone up simply because of the fall in the value of the pound. I note that in the debate on NATO in the Commons on 20 June, Dr Julian Lewis stated in this context that there is,

“doubt that the pound will hold its value against another currency”.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/6/18; col. 404.]

Quite so—yet the answer cannot be that we simply procure in the UK, given that we must seek value for money and the most suitable equipment. So perhaps we need some honesty about how we work with, and need to work with, our European partners.

The Government claim that they wish to promote “global Britain” without, as the Foreign Affairs Select Committee in the other place pointed out, defining what that actually means. Perhaps it is merely a bumper sticker, as indicated by the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt. I note that the Henry Jackson Society—not a left-wing organisation—states:

“A ‘Global Britain’ not only requires a stable and liberal Europe; a stable and liberal Europe also requires continued UK involvement in European affairs”.


I could not agree more. We had a pre-eminent position in Europe, along with Germany and France. Together with France, the UK is a member of the Security Council, and the UK added to its bow that it apparently had a special relationship with the United States. What a privileged position to be in.

The Henry Jackson Society suggests a reinvention of the wheel. It says:

“A new European Defence Initiative … should be established to bind together European nations committed to the liberal democratic international order. Affiliated to NATO, it would bring together military, intelligence and diplomatic capabilities to strengthen Europe in the face of Russian threats. The EDI would only be open to stable, liberal and democratic European countries, and would require a minimum 2% of GDP spend on defence”.


That is exactly what the right-wing press said we should not do when we were in the heart of Europe.

The noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, recommends that we explain the importance of NATO to the younger generation, and she is surely right. The risk of not explaining the EU to the British people is evident to see. The Henry Jackson Society goes on to say:

“The UK’s ability to support its European neighbours, provide leadership in NATO, realise post-Brexit opportunities, and meet its national defence and security needs are, of course, constrained by funding pressures”—


which of course we have discussed. It recommends that the Government need to increase defence spending to 3% of GDP by 2023,

“in order that Britain remains Europe’s leading military power, ahead of France, Germany and Russia”.

As my noble friend Lord Wallace emphasised, we undermined our economy and place in the world by leaving the EU, so how, then, do we balance competing domestic and international demands simply to maintain our current position?

So the UK is in a weaker position than it might have been as we head into the NATO summit. What in the long term does the Minister think will happen to the UK-held position of Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe if we leave the EU? I am sure that the noble Baroness will reassure us, but the Government did not anticipate our losing our place on the International Criminal Court.

We have been a leading member of NATO. We already more or less meet the target of 2% of GDP on defence and, rightly, we urge fairer burden sharing, as the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, in particular emphasised, although the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, pointed to progress. So what leading role might we play? We have shown that we have little influence on the US President—although, clearly, few do. The noble Baroness, Lady Helic, is right to say that whatever President Trump does, the rest of NATO must calmly make the case for working together. But NATO has major challenges to face, and we have heard those outlined in the debate today. Noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Campbell, have very effectively outlined the risks from Russia. What I heard from the noble Lord, Lord Soley, in relation to Salisbury, reminded me of when I was in Leningrad in that rather totemic year of 1984 and Mrs Gandhi was assassinated. Our Soviet minder told us that the CIA had done it and was most resentful when we jumped to the conclusion that was actually right in this case.

Clearly there also needs to be engagement with Russia and an understanding of how, facing NATO, Russians, too, may feel threatened. We need to work together in the Middle East. I note with interest what my noble friend Lord Wallace said about the number of influential Russians in the UK today, and the emphasis of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, on the need to—I think I quote him—“dismantle the wilder narratives” that both sides have used about each other.

At this summit, NATO will need to address Europe’s southern flank—again, noble Lords spoke about this. The instability and terrorism there is incredibly important in terms of European stability. NATO is seeking to support countries in the MENA region, including Jordan, which is hosting a huge proportion of refugees from Syria, and we should not take our eyes off that. Migration from Africa, for all the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, and my noble friend Lord Wallace emphasised, will become a growing problem.

Others mentioned the danger of pulling away from the Iran nuclear deal. As the noble Lord, Lord Howell, and the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, emphasised, NATO will also be concerned about Turkey’s future role, with its re-elected President, but it is surely vital to keep Turkey on board. The noble Baronesses, Lady Anelay and Lady Helic, are right to emphasise that NATO must promote women, peace and security, but I have heard nothing in any of the briefings about whether NATO will address this. Noble Lords mentioned cyber and hybrid warfare, and how NATO might further develop its role here. Some noble Lords, especially the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, addressed the positive case for enlargement.

Will President Trump stay through all of these issues? Might he choose to wander around Brussels? It is rather unlikely but, if he does, he might see the terrible effects and devastation of war. We all hope that the institution of NATO is strong enough to weather the pressures upon it. As we have done today, we need to restate and reinforce how important it is for liberal democracies to work together and share sovereignty, as the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, mentioned, because it is only through that that so much more can be achieved than by single nations seeking to go it alone.