NATO

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

I, too, thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for a debate on NATO in the main Chamber.

My first real awareness of NATO came when I was interviewed to join the Royal Air Force in the 1980s. I was asked how many countries were in NATO and who was the Secretary-General. Of course, all Members will know that there were 16 member countries at that time and that the noble Lord Carrington was Secretary-General. NATO has now grown to 28 member nations, with former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as Secretary-General. Like previous speakers, I now serve on the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, which brings together parliamentarians from the Atlantic alliance and contains 257 delegates from the 28 nations. I serve on one of the five committees, the defence and security committee. I am proud that a UK member, the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley), is the current president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and is well into the first year of his two-year term. Congratulations, el Presidente.

NATO’s essential core tasks and principles are summed up in the strategic concept, and I will run through them. The cornerstone of the alliance, of course, is collective defence. NATO members will always assist each other against attack in accordance with article 5 of the Washington treaty. That commitment remains firm and binding.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

May I ask my hon. Friend’s opinion of whether French Guiana, in south America, might be defended under that collective security umbrella if it were attacked by Brazil?

[Jason McCartney]

My hon. and gallant Friend makes a good point. There are a number of anomalies, such as the situation of the dependency of the Falklands Islands and the tensions between Greece and Turkey, which of course are both member nations, in Cyprus. There are certain cases, of which he gave a prime example, in which article 5 perhaps has a little leeway.

Crisis management is another core task of NATO, and it has a unique and robust set of political and military capabilities to address the full spectrum of crises before, during and after conflicts. Of course, my hon. and gallant Friend was involved in one such conflict in Bosnia.

Another task is co-operative security. The alliance engages actively to enhance international security, through partnerships and by contributing actively to arms control, non-proliferation and disarmament. Other recently added facets of NATO’s work are cyber-security, which has been much in the news in the past fortnight, energy security and the threat posed by climate change.

NATO has been at the heart, and at the head, of command and control for current and recent western military interventions and operations. In many ways, it now delivers the military aspects of the United Nations’ work. I will highlight three examples. First, as we have heard, there is the international security assistance force, the NATO-led security mission in Afghanistan that the UN Security Council established in December 2001 under resolution 1386. Secondly, there was Operation Unified Protector, the NATO operation enforcing UN Security Council resolutions 1970 and 1973, concerning the Libyan civil war. Those resolutions imposed sanctions on key members of the Gaddafi Government and authorised NATO to implement an arms embargo and a no-fly zone and to use all necessary means, short of foreign occupation, to protect Libyan civilians and civilian-populated areas.

Thirdly, there is Operation Ocean Shield, which was referred to earlier. It is NATO’s contribution to the anti-piracy campaign off the coast of the horn of Africa, following the earlier Operation Allied Protector. Naval operations began early in 2009, having been approved by the North Atlantic Council, and primarily involve warships from the UK and the United States, although vessels from many other nations are also included.

That brings me to some of the challenges facing NATO, a big one of which is duplication. The operation against Somali piracy is a good example. I have been with the NATO Parliamentary Assembly to Djibouti, which is strategically placed on the horn of Africa, and there are clear signs of overlap and mission repeat. We have not only the NATO-led mission but an EU-led operation called Operation Atalanta, also known as European Union Naval Force Somalia. There is also an independent French air base, a US army camp and a Japanese air base. Time and time again, I ask the commanding officers how much liaison there is between the different operations, and I have never got a satisfactory answer.

[Mike Gapes]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that at Northwood, in this country, there is close co-operation between the NATO and EU activities, and there is also UN discussion about anti-piracy activity. I do not think we should be quite as pessimistic as he implies.

[Jason McCartney]

I guess that the hon. Gentleman is a bit more pro-EU than I am. That is probably what is behind his comments. I will give another example of what duplication does. It can confuse command and control, and further evidence of that is the EU force headquarters being set up in Belgium, in a similar location to NATO’s headquarters on the outskirts of Brussels. That is more costly duplication of command and control.

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman should be celebrating the success of the anti-piracy operation off the coast of Somalia. I will mention unnecessary duplication in my speech, but the activities that he has mentioned are complementary, as are those of the Chinese and a number of other Asian countries. They are all operating together successfully to achieve a common goal. It is a success, not a problem as he is trying to make out.

[Jason McCartney]

I disagree with the right hon. Gentleman. He will be well aware how confusing it can be to answer to two leaders—for example, the leader of one’s party and a union. As a serviceman myself, I believe it is important to have a clear command and control structure and for people to know whom they answer to.

[Mrs Moon]

The hon. Gentleman will remember that I was also a member of the delegation to Djibouti. I specifically remember the response that we received to our questions, which was that people found it helpful to move between the two different organisations, largely because of the different rules of engagement. They said that the European rules of engagement gave greater flexibility. We should bear that in mind.

[Jason McCartney]

And of course, as the hon. Lady will remember, another interesting aspect was the Japanese air base, which I think is the only place in the world where Japanese forces are operating militarily outside their own sovereign area.

Expansion is another area of concern. Ever more former Warsaw pact countries are joining. Poland, Romania, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have already done so, and many more are waiting to join and are already acting as observers. It is sometimes asked whether even Russia will join NATO at some point. It already has observer status at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, and I have chatted to the leader of the Russian Communist party in the Duma while on a NATO briefing. Having been a serviceman in the late 1980s and ’90s, I found that very strange indeed.

What would happen if Scotland were to go independent? How long would it have to wait in the long queue to join NATO? By the way, our NATO assets, including our Trident submarines, which I have visited on the Clyde, would have to be relocated.

My final area of concern is budgets, to which many Members have referred. There is an increasing balance of capabilities within NATO. Eighteen member nations are spending less on defence from their current budgets than they were four years ago, and as others have said, only three allies have spent the target of 2% or more of GDP on defence in the past couple of years—the United Kingdom, the United States and Greece. We have already heard about the situation in Greece because of its GDP. Would an independent Scotland be able to commit 2% of its GDP to defence spending? There is pressure on the United States, which now provides 77% of allied defence spending within NATO. Just a decade ago, it was 63%. The United States’ commitment to European defence as it shifts its focus to Asia is one of the biggest uncertainties.

NATO is at the heart of western defence and overseas operations. It is changing and adapting, and it has many challenges, but we on the NATO Parliamentary Assembly will continue to scrutinise the Atlantic alliance, support it, celebrate its achievements and remember what is was set up for—keeping the peace in Europe.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Spellar]

Interestingly, Government Members have got back to their default answer to every question being the so-called black hole, as these days Unite and Len McCluskey are normally the cause of all the problems. This is a ridiculous way for Government Members to continue, because many Conservative Members at the time of “Options for Change”—those who were involved very much on the military side—were concerned at the cuts that were taking place. They did recognise that they were not planned, that the Treasury was taking too much out of defence and that that was to the detriment of defence.

Unfortunately, the current Administration seem to be repeating that error with their policy of drastic retrenchment in our military capability. That is damaging not only in itself—we will have a debate on that—but in the message it sends to Washington, because there is a proper debate in Washington about the balance of military expenditure and its deployment. We need to get that into perspective, because it is undoubtedly true that, as President Obama says, America is still the indispensible power. We should recognise that US defence spending is twice as much as that of the other NATO countries combined, including Canada and Turkey. Furthermore, as we all know, the US spends its money, particularly in the equipment programme, more efficiently.

There have been exaggerated concerns about a US pivot towards the Pacific, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend mentioned. The move from an estimated 60% focus on the Atlantic and 40% focus on the Pacific to a 50:50 balance is a shift, but 50% of the US defence budget is still more than that of the rest of NATO put together; the US is still a formidably effective and overwhelming presence. Our real concern should therefore be voices on Capitol Hill, as people there may become weary of what they would see as carping criticisms from Europe. They may question whether, after the end of the cold war, the US still has that obligation to show such a commitment to European defence unless European countries, including ourselves, show a similar level of commitment.

Hon. Members have mentioned Secretary Gates’s comments about the need for Europe to pull its weight in NATO. Otherwise, he said, NATO will have little future. He has called for the European nations to step up to the bar.

We are either all in this together, committed to playing our full parts, or we are not an alliance that will last. We should also recognise that our public are becoming wary and weary and that there is public reticence about international military expedition. Mixed and impatient European public opinion on Libya demonstrated that, and I would say to the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley) that if he looks in Hansard he will see that at the time of the Libya situation, I was raising questions in this House about the fate of surface-to-air missiles—an issue that had been raised with me at a very senior level by concerned officials in the Russian administration; they had sold them to Libya in the first place, but they were concerned about their location.

We need to recognise that there is a danger that multilateralist proactive action will be hampered by public scepticism and reserve arising from the experience of recent conflicts and that that will be a problem in all our countries. I recognise that the percentage of GDP spent on defence by the UK is greater than that of other European nations whose defence spending, as a number of Members have mentioned, is at a level that is unsustainable if we are to continue to have an effective European component in the alliance. Those are significant issues with which Ministers and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly will have to continue to deal.

I say to the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney), regarding his remarks about Somalia, that I think it is unfortunate for us to start to pose NATO against the EU in that context. Somalia is a particularly bad example to pick. There is no uncertainty in the mind of a serving rating or officer about the chain of command—the person who is giving him the orders is above him in the chain of command. In fact, Somalia has been enormously effective in dealing with piracy—not one ship has been captured by the pirates this year and there has been a dramatic drop in piracy and in the number of people being held—and in integrating the international efforts of countries with different traditions, and perhaps even different objectives, but with a combined objective of trying to keep the sea lanes open and to protect seafarers, vessels and cargos. Those operations have been well synchronised between the various parties. It shows that where there is a properly organised European component that can play a useful part and is an encouragement to countries of the EU to step up their contribution to defence within that framework, rather than a cause for criticism.

[Jason McCartney]

Would the right hon. Gentleman be happy to know that there is an EU mission staffed with 80 people in Djibouti, duplicating the effort provided by our embassy, the French embassy and the German embassy? Or is he happy yet again to spend yet more money on more bureaucracy?

[Mr Spellar]

Again, the answer to everything is Europe. If efficiencies are needed, that is worth considering—and they would be welcome—but I notice that the hon. Gentleman in no way denied that this was an effective operation. There might be some surplus people, and let us have a look at that, but the integration of the NATO operation and Operation Atalanta has been very successful. We should be celebrating that, because other piracy problems are emerging in other parts of the world that will need to be dealt with and the United States will be neither able nor willing to participate in all of them. Issues might well arise in west Africa partly because of terrorism but partly because of the serious rise in the influence of organised crime.

[Jason McCartney]

Of course it is a successful mission in Somalia; there are so many people there doing so many things. Another example of the overlap came when we went to Northwood for a briefing: we had a briefing from the NATO admiral—a three-star—and had to have exactly the same briefing an hour later from an EU admiral. Too many three-stars and top brass—come on!

[Mr Spellar]

No doubt in the second world war, the hon. Gentleman would have complained if he had to meet both Montgomery and Eisenhower. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) has only just walked into the Chamber, but he seems to have a lot to say.