Ukraine, Middle East, North Africa and Security

David Tredinnick Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

It is, as ever, a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), and I too welcome this debate. I would like more of these debates—I am sure I am not alone in that—not only because a lot is happening on the international stage that directly affects our interests, global possessions and so forth, but because it is important that those on the Front Benches are in touch with the mood of Back Benchers across the House. It is in their common interest to ensure that we minimise the chances of a vote taking place like the one that happened a year ago. More communication is good; we need more debates of this sort, and that this debate has been so oversubscribed illustrates that point well.

In the brief time available I will confine my remarks to ISIS and perhaps to what I consider to be the dilution of skills within the FCO—something that should concern us all. The Government are right to make a commitment that there will be no air strikes in Iraq unless that has been debated in this House and approved. They were also right to exhibit the cautious approach that they have shown to date, which is to be welcomed. We have heard it said many times that Iraq casts a long shadow, and the bar for military action has been raised. There is no doubt about that in the House, but I contend that it is not a bad thing, given the number of errors we have made in the region over the past 10 to 12 years.

I take issue with those who suggest—we have heard this quite a bit in the Chamber today—that by exhibiting a cautious approach and voting against action in Syria last year, Britain is somehow retreating from the world, or that we wish to bury our heads in the sand and do not want to play any more on the world stage. That is utter tosh. We are a key member of the UN Security Council and of NATO, and a prominent member of the Commonwealth. We are not retreating from the world, but if a slightly more cautious approach is needed, that is surely how it should be in this place, when the most serious decision we can make in this House is whether to send troops to war—a decision that costs lives and can result in great expense in both lives and treasure.

We have only to look back at our recent track record. There can be no denying that we went to war on a false premise in Iraq in 2003. There were no weapons of mass destruction. Fact: we went to war on a false premise. Some may dispute this, but I think that a key error—this was referred to by the hon. Member for Newport West—was in Afghanistan. We all agreed with the initial narrow objective of ridding Afghanistan of al-Qaeda. That was laudable and we supported it. It went wrong when we allowed the mission to morph into one of nation building, which was a much broader aim that we fundamentally under-resourced.

[David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)]

I am listening carefully to my hon. Friend and thinking about the vote last year, when regrettably I was not able to support the Government. Listening to my hon. Friend, I would say that the problem was that chemical weapons could be moved around very easily, and so as a military objective it was not very satisfactory.

[Mr Baron]

I agree. Technically, the motion was about that, but there was also a push last year by the Government to arm rebels fighting Assad. However, because it would have been impossible to track and trace those arms, some of them would have ended up, inadvertently, in the hands of the very extremists we are now taking on in northern Iraq—a bitter irony if ever there was one.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)]

I want to focus on Ukraine and Russia in the short time allowed to me. In 1988 and the early 1990s I chaired a parliamentary group, the Future of Europe Trust, dedicated to building links with Russia. I am appalled at what has happened between Russia and Ukraine. It is totally unnecessary and I think the west has done quite a lot of damage through not consulting on moves towards European Union membership for Ukraine after its nuclear disarmament. I also think that the approach of NATO has been quite wrong.

I refer the House to what the then US Secretary of State Mr Baker said at the time of the reunification of Germany. He said that there would be

“no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east”.

The Russian newspaper Kommersant reported that President Putin made it clear at the 2008 NATO conference in Bucharest that, because Ukraine and, for that matter, Belarus are so clearly in Russia’s back yard, any move towards bringing NATO to Ukraine would cause severe problems with Russia. We have to take that into consideration. There is also the history of Crimea, which was taken by French and British forces, and that means Russia would see NATO coming into Ukraine as another defeat. Russia has always had security worries since the French attack under Napoleon and, of course, that by Hitler in the second world war.

However, I see Russia potentially as a friend. It helped us enormously through the northern distribution network when the Afghan war was at its height, and it did not interrupt our use of the Manas air base in Kyrgyzstan. If we do not make some sort of accommodation with Russia, we will have huge problems with Iran. Many hon. Friends have referred to the need to deal with the Syrian theatre, which is also a subject in this debate, but without Russian help that will be impossible. We need to be accommodating as far the small Russian base at Tartus in Syria is concerned.

The way forward is to say firmly that NATO will not move into Ukraine, part of which is anyway in Asia. The European Union needs to show some sympathy in dealing with that. We now need a realistic policy: we cannot go on with expansion that undermines Russian security, and we must think very carefully about bringing the Russians on board to resolve the terrible problems in Syria, Iraq and the surrounding areas.