Russia’s Grand Strategy

Debate between Chris Bryant and Richard Foord

Thursday 19th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) on securing this debate, which has the same title as the debate last January. In preparing for today, I have read what he and other Members said then. I think it is very generous to talk about a Russian “grand strategy” because I regard Russia’s leadership in the Kremlin as an opportunist outfit. Russia loves the idea of a divided west and when it sees us divided it takes full advantage, especially when it can smell western weakness, a lack of will or disinterest.

I am not going to come up with any fine words on this subject—certainly none as fine as those of a predecessor MP for Tiverton, Lord Palmerston. In 1858, he wrote:

“The policy pursued by the Russian Government has always been to push forward its encroachments as fast and as far as the apathy or want of firmness of other Governments would allow it to go, but always to stop and retire when it was met with decided resistance, and then to wait till the next favourable opportunity”.

I would like to draw on a couple of examples from the past 125 years in which we have continued to see imperial Russia or the Soviet Union taking an expansionist approach, only to be pinned back by western democracies and others. I would also say that we should avoid throwing all caution to the wind, because the root of Russia’s approach, in my view, is injured pride—not just in the Kremlin, but among most Russian people. Finally, the House should think not only about a grand strategy for the UK, but about a strategy for NATO. We need to work collaboratively with our NATO allies to ensure that the alliance is working on a strategy.

We all know that Putin’s historical essays have been entirely discredited by historians, but they are useful to us. They are a useful guide to his intent: I think he models himself on some of his predecessors from the 17th and 18th centuries. At the end of the 18th century, Catherine the Great is supposed to have said of her enormous land empire:

“I have no way to defend my borders but to extend them.”

That certainly fits in with what went on during her reign: after she came to power, the country’s westernmost border moved from east of the River Dnipro to west of Kyiv, so we can see that Putin has some stand-out role models from the time of the Tsar and the years before that.

What we have been seeing in Russia in the past 15 years is a restoration of pride following a period of imperial collapse. Of course there is no direct comparison with the UK, but if we want a sense of how Russians feel, some Conservative Members may remember how they felt in the early 1980s when there was, perhaps, a restoration of British pride after having had to manage the economy in the 1970s with the aid of a loan from the International Monetary Fund. It is that feeling that your country has been put down and is coming back—the rising of a phoenix from the flames.

Yet in the Kremlin, Russia is intimidated by the lack of attractiveness of its centralised political tradition: its post-communist neighbours are attracted by western co-operative structures. Before last year, I thought that those in the Kremlin who are responsible for Russian grand strategy knew the difference between coercion and violence—coercion might involve the threat of violence, but would stop short of using force—but we have seen that that is not true.

This debate is so useful for thinking about grand strategy partly in terms of ends: if we think of grand strategy in terms of ends, ways and means, it is useful for us to think today about the Kremlin’s intent. There have tended to be reasons why Russia has on occasion seemed willing to permit Ukraine to be independent of it. In 1918, the first world war having ended, Lenin said:

“We need both hands free”,

and permitted Ukraine to become independent. In 1991, Yeltsin had his own motive for enabling Ukraine to become free: to sideline Gorbachev as President of the Soviet Union.

But that is history. I was so encouraged to hear the NATO Secretary-General, Jens Stoltenberg, saying in December 2021 that

“that’s the kind of world we don’t want to return to, where big powers had a say, or a kind of right, to put limitations on what sovereign, independent nations can do”.

[Sir Chris Bryant]

Surely the key moment was the signing of the Budapest accord. Was there not something of a failing on the part of this country and others? It was an innocent failing, but we signed up to something that was so nebulous that it could never really be enforced, although in theory it looked as if we were guaranteeing the territorial integrity of Ukraine, in exchange for which it surrendered its nuclear weapons.

[Richard Foord]

I entirely agree. The Budapest memorandum was not worth the paper it was written on. It had no legal standing; even the word “guarantee” has different meanings in different languages, and the Ukrainians could certainly have interpreted it very differently from the British, Americans and others who drafted it.

During military conflicts in which the UK has been engaged over the last two or three decades, we have heard the claim that we have no quarrel with the people of “X”—insert Serbia or Iran—but only with its Government or, often, its dictator, but I do not think we can repeat that claim in this instance. When we look at opinion polling in Russia, it is pretty staggering to see how much popular support there is for the war in Ukraine. According to what has been said by Ukrainians I have talked to in the last couple of weeks, they regard the fact that we talk in the west about Putin or Putin’s war as successful propaganda on the part of Russia. They would much prefer us to talk about Russia in the round, and attribute responsibility much more broadly than to just one man in the Kremlin. I also think we need to avoid driving our competitors and our adversaries into Russia’s orbit; not least, we need to avoid knocking China into Russia’s open arms.

We need to think of the UK’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in terms of a NATO strategy, rather than the UK’s grand strategy alone. In that context, it is worth recalling a 19th-century musical hall song. You will be relieved to know, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I shall not attempt to sing it. Members will have heard the lyrics before:

“the rugged Russian Bear

Full bent on blood and robbery, has crawled out of his lair…

We don’t want to fight but by jingo if we do,

We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, and got the money too!”

That is an anachronism today. The UK cannot boast the ships, or the money or, certainly, the men in the Army.

Let me end with another quotation, this time from Winston Churchill. We will all have heard his famous characterisation of Russia as

“a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”,

but it is less well known that he went on to say:

“perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest. It cannot be in accordance with the interest or safety of Russia that Germany should plant itself upon the shores of the Black Sea”.

We need to bear in mind that Germany is cautious because it has good reason to be cautious, given its history. Instead of criticising our allies, we should come up with a strategy, with our allies, that sees Ukraine defend its borders and defeat Russia.