Ukraine: Tactical Nuclear Weapons

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I stand before you a rather substandard substitute for my noble friend Lady Smith, whom I am afraid has caught the dreaded Covid. In our brief conversation, which was mainly coughing and was continued by text, it was quite clear that we will miss her wisdom on this.

It has become quite clear in this debate that there is some degree of consensus that Russia should not be allowed to march into a neighbouring state and say, “I’m in charge.” My Russian history is old and rather ropey, but there is a horrible quotation that the borders of Russia, at any point in history, are exactly where the Russian Army has put them. I had rather hoped that those days were behind the Russian state. Briefly, in about 1990, we all thought that we were heading into a new age, when Russia would become the state that we would or had come to recognise, not something that is constantly expanding and contracting as its armies win and lose battles.

All nations are in the habit of forgetting that they lose wars. Our own history books are as guilty as anybody else’s: to look at popular history you would think that we won the Hundred Years’ War, but we are out of France. Nations lose and contract. They also survive and often strengthen because of it. The fact that the Russian leadership cannot accept that its empire has effectively been driven back to its heartlands means that we have somebody who is very difficult to deal with—somebody who wants to be a second-rate Peter the Great. It is worth remembering that it is said that St Petersburg is built on the bones of 100,000 serfs, and that does not count the people who died in his wars with Sweden and Turkey.

The glamorisation of war seems embedded in this view and is something that we must remember when we talk about great strategic tactics and swinging backwards and forwards. I hope we all listened very carefully to my noble friend Lady Bakewell’s speech about women in particular and the atrocities committed in war. Making sure that Ukraine is allowed to survive and remain safe must be an objective. I hope we can take some action against those who have allowed the atrocities that are listed in the middle of Portcullis House to happen—and indeed those who committed them, but those who allowed them are probably more important.

If such action takes place, I hope it does so under the rule of law. We must remember that, if we apply these standards, we must apply them the whole way through. I hope the Government will assure us that they will work towards the survival of Ukraine, that any settlement will be done under the rule of law, and that people will accept that that is a must. We do not want to end up being a mirror of Russia on any level —even a blurred and badly reflected one. We must not do it; it must be done under the legal norms that we embrace.

As the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, said about the danger of nuclear weapons, I and, I think, virtually everybody in the Chamber grew up with the domino theory that they start small, then we get slightly bigger bangs and slightly nastier outcomes, and then it builds. I think that many people have said this was probably always some sort of myth or gateway to a nightmare—you cannot expect that to happen. The noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, put his finger on it when he pointed to what I would call the cock-up school of history. Accidents happen. If we want to scare ourselves, we talk about the near misses of the Cold War. I think that Russia once mistook geese for incoming nuclear missiles on a radar screen. These things have happened, and we have just about managed to step away from them. Can the Government once again give us a real assurance that there is constant interaction between us, our NATO allies—particular those with nuclear capacity—and Russia to try to make sure that, if we are all going to a fiery hell, we do not go there by accident? I cannot ask the Minister for any more details because I doubt very much he has them—nor should he give them to me if he does—but can he give an assurance that communication is constantly happening?

On the consequences of even limited strikes, we have just had a solution of a conventional retaliation that might be possible, but who knows? Remember that the Russians were supposed to be able to walk straight into Ukraine and take it over. It does not do to underestimate your enemy.

We are going to have some degree of constant realisation that we are in a very bad place. It is not only that we have a recession, but others are going to be colder this winter than they ever expected to be. A way of monitoring and being ready for the opportunity to end it is something I think we can have.

I have one or two other smaller points. Something that was hinted at by the noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, is golden visas. We had a review in 2018, I think, and that is a while back now. Can the Government publish, or at least let us know when they will be publishing, the outcome of that because, apparently, we have had a review and we have not published it. The Wagner Group strikes me as mercenaries with an appalling record. Are we going to brand it a terrorist organisation? It would be a reasonable thing to do from what I have seen. These small steps are part of conveying to Russia and the Russian people that what is going on is totally unacceptable. That is an important part of what we can do. We can talk here about grand military strategy, but these small steps are important in building up the background music.

In Syria, Russia decided that pounding cities to the ground was a good way to win. It was right, but at hideous cost. The only thing that I can say about that is that we have got to engage with Russia and try whenever we can to get to the people. What I think has scared Putin most is the fact that, when he tried try to mobilise his army, large parts of his population left. That is surely something we can at least use as a lever. Nuclear weapons may be one end of it, but when your population turns round and says “Great, wonderful, but I ain’t going” you have real trouble.