NATO and International Security

Debate between John Healey and John Hayes

Thursday 19th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

I would agree with the contention that possession has helped to hold the peace, but as my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) has just pointed out, possession is a necessary but insufficient component of effective deterrence. The communication that my right hon. Friend has just talked about is part of a picture of effective deterrence, alongside political leadership of countries and alliances.

If the House will allow me, I shall move on to the strategic concept and the weeks ahead. Next month, as the Secretary of State has said, member nations will set NATO’s strategy for the next decade, with all democracies now facing new threats to their security. NATO’s last strategic concept was agreed in 2010. It declared:

“Today, the Euro-Atlantic area is at peace”.

It sought a strategic partnership with Russia, it had limited reference to terrorism and it made no mention at all of China. The proximity and severity of the security threat in Europe now demand a clear break with the principles-based platitudes that have been the hallmark of NATO’s previous public strategic concept. The nature of the threat is both clear and urgent. Russia has attacked Ukraine, overridden the NATO-Russia Founding Act, breached the Geneva conventions, buried the Helsinki Final Act, made unilateral threats of nuclear attack against NATO and stands accused of crimes against humanity and genocide.

The Secretary-General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, said:

“Regardless of when, how, the war in Ukraine ends, the war has already had long-term consequences for our security. NATO needs to adapt to that new reality.”

Most importantly, NATO has to adapt its primary task of collective defence.

When the Labour leader and I visited Estonia in February to thank our British troops, they told us about NATO’s tripwire deterrent, which the Secretary of State mentioned, with forward forces giving ground when attacked before retaking it later with reinforcements. The horrific Russian destruction of Ukrainian cities and the brutal shelling of civilians makes it clear that such a strategy of deterrence by reinforcement is no longer conscionable. NATO must instead aim for deterrence by denial, which is the operational consequence of NATO leaders’ commitment to defending every inch of NATO territory.

I am not sure whether that is covered by the combat effectiveness the Defence Secretary spoke about, but it implies a very serious strengthening of military capability, with more advanced systems, more permanent basing, higher force readiness and more intense exercises.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

I hope the right hon. Gentleman will excuse me for not being here at the beginning of his speech but, when I saw him on the screen, I rushed to hear what he has to say.

Does not this reappraisal, which is the consequence of recent events, need to recognise that, contrary to predictions until very recently that all future warfare would be high tech and entirely different from what we knew before, we now see that much of what is happening in Ukraine is very conventional and rather old-fashioned in some ways? The horror of street-to-street and trench-to-trench fighting requires a reappraisal that might mean we need just as many, or more, troops on the ground, more tanks and more of the things that we were told, not very long ago, are redundant.

I might say the same of security more widely, particularly terrorism. Tragically and awfully, terrorism has adapted to use very ordinary, everyday things. We see cars used as weapons, for example. The recent terrorist attacks have been rather low tech, rather than high tech.

[John Healey]

I am not sure whether the right hon. Gentleman means to catch your eye, Mr Deputy Speaker, but he makes several important points. His last point, on low tech, is right. In many ways, high tech can sometimes become low-tech weaponry. It is easy to conceive that, in the wrong hands, an unmanned aerial vehicle or drone could almost be a flying car bomb.

It is important that we continue to invest in and develop high-tech systems, which give us the edge and some of the deterrent effect we require. Like the right hon. Gentleman, one of the lessons I take from Ukraine is that, in the reality of battle, conflict and confrontation, we need “now tech” and not just high tech. That is one of the flaws in the procurement system, as the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) said in his intervention.