Strategic Defence Review

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Alderdice (LD)]

My Lords, one of the early and welcome announcements by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer was that we were to have a new strategic defence review, and we are all gratified that the SDR is being led by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, to whom we are indebted for the debate today and for his wonderful introduction to it. He brings a great range of experience, as we all know.

I have previously appealed to the noble Lord in your Lordships’ House to see this review of defence in its widest sense, and I do so again today. There will, necessarily, be a focus on matériel, men and money, and this is right. We need to look at our military resources to see what we have and what we need in a world where the character of war is changing rapidly, as we see in the conduct of the war in Ukraine. I refer noble Lords to the International Relations and Defence Committee’s recently published report Ukraine: A Wake-up Call. It is a very good report. I will not repeat a lot of what it says because I know it has already been sent to the noble Lord, and indeed he played his own part in the earlier drafts of the report, so I know he is familiar with it.

Contrary to a lot of the writing from 10 or 15 years ago about new wars, the old forms of warfare have not disappeared—they are still there. It is rather the case that new ones have sprung into significance in addition to the old ones. Drone warfare, to which the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, just referred, has taken a dramatically increased significance, and our procurement must take this into account. However, as in some areas, bigger and more sophisticated is not always better. Our US allies, for example, have been using $2 million missiles to take out drones sent by the Houthis in Yemen at $2,000 a time. That is just not an economically viable strategy.

Our Ukrainian friends, too, have used ingenious tactics to make up for limited resources, not just in converting off-the-shelf drones for military use but, for example, in packing an old Cessna plane with explosives and flying it into Russia to explode in an oil terminal. They were aided by the low radar profile of this old plane, as the Russians designed their defences to deal with the more sophisticated, long-range, high-tech US missiles that they had been expecting. We need to be creative and imaginative—in a different way, of course—as well as to become more efficient and effective in our procurement.

I want to elaborate a little on the question of defence in its widest sense. One of the downsides of having a fully professional Army with a high reputation is that our population has come to feel that it can be safely left to the professionals to do all our defence for us. There is little appreciation not only of the level of danger, which we speak about in our report, but also that the population at large needs to play its part in national defence. That involves encouraging young people to join up and exploring recruitment, training and retention of part-timers, but it is also crucial that our people realise that the dangers that our country and our wider world face require all of us to be engaged.

The dangers against which we must develop our defences are not only military in nature. They include epidemic diseases and climate catastrophes, and some of them can be used and abused by our enemies. We were reminded of the need for more personnel to be trained and ready and available for service during the recent pandemic and widespread flooding. We needed people who could go out and do things, not just the best brains and the most advanced research technology. We needed people on the ground to manage the situation. That is why I seek some reassurance from the noble Lord and his colleagues that they will take seriously the need for more personnel.

It is not that I do not appreciate the technological requirements. I am particularly concerned that, with hypersonic weapons making their appearance and the terrifying prospect that they could soon carry nuclear warheads, to which human operatives cannot respond sufficiently quickly, there will be pressure to give over decision-making to artificial intelligence, as has already been done in the Middle East, for example, in identifying, tracking, targeting and killing human subjects. I cannot see how we can address this issue without a serious effort to achieve international limitations and regulations, however difficult that is. That means collaboration between the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. I know that, despite the current hostilities, there have been some lower-level conversations among scientists, but I ask the noble Lord to consider recommending that our Government engage directly with Russia and China, as well as with our allies. We did it during the Cold War to try to achieve limitations on nuclear weapons. AI and nuclear weapons as a combination make this an urgent initiative, especially for nuclear weapon systems.

Perhaps the most urgent request that I would make at this moment is that the noble Lord includes de-escalation as an essential feature of our approach to defence planning. If our only response to acts of aggression is to engage in ever higher levels of aggression, which then provoke a similar reaction, as we are currently seeing in the Middle East, the consequences can only end up being catastrophic. We need to think, work and plan for how we use diplomatic and other relations with our enemies, as well as our friends, in order to be able to de-escalate dangerous situations. That requires the deployment of appropriate resources to defend our country.

Finally, on resources more generally, our people, pundits, political leaders and perhaps even some on the military side have lived for some years with the illusion that our world was becoming a safer place, or at least a less dangerous environment. This is manifestly not the case. At the same time, we cannot draw on the imperial resources that were available during the last two global conflicts. Surely we need to consider seriously whether we must review the territory that we can realistically defend. The defence of our own people, our own country and our region, western Europe, is our greatest responsibility. Although we can also play some role in the wider world and some of our historical areas of responsibility, it may now be time to trim our ambitions to what we can actually do. Illusions about our capacities will not serve us well in protecting our people in a real war. We must focus on addressing the world, especially the world that is closest to home, as it is, not as we wish it was. I wish the noble Lord and his colleagues well as they do their best to help us with that challenging task.

King’s Speech

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice (LD)]

My Lords, how to address in five minutes the range of foreign affairs and defence in a fast-changing world, and the context of deepening global conflict? Since 1964—fully 60 years ago—we have had not a War Office, but a Ministry of Defence. I welcome the immediate announcement by the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, that we are to have a new strategic defence review, and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, on his appointment to lead that review. Can I appeal to the noble Lord to focus on defence, but defence in its widest?

When we fought the two previous global conflicts, the world was a different place. Britain had responsibility for a global empire and was able to call on the people and resources of that empire to fight those wars. We no longer have such resources, and our main responsibilities are not the conduct of wars in other places, but the defence of our own country and its territories. It is clear that our UK military is currently unprepared for a conflict on any scale, and our Armed Forces would be unable to defend our country beyond a few weeks in the event of a serious threat.

In recent years, our Governments have engaged, at inordinate cost, in too many unwinnable wars of choice. I say unwinnable because it is now clear to any objective student of war that while the nature of war has not changed, the character of armed conflict has changed dramatically. The use of overwhelming force no longer ensures victory and success. Since 1945, the most powerful political, economic, and military state in the world has engaged in wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and elsewhere. The Korean War was a draw and North Korea is now a threat to world order. Vietnam and Afghanistan were costly defeats, and Iraq, Syria and Libya are chaotic, failed states that are now nurseries of violent terrorism and insurgency, not examples of post-war liberal democracy. It seems likely that Russia in Ukraine and Israel in Gaza will also fail to achieve their war aims, but a huge number of people have already died, massive resources have been expended and the world is in a more dangerous place than ever before.

Wars are no longer won by powerful and well-resourced rational actors operating on best socioeconomic and power judgments. They are increasingly won by devoted actors who are prepared to fight, kill and die in the service of values they hold to be ultimate: this is a new scenario. As I have told this House before, on a number of occasions, the third global conflict is already upon us, initially in cyberspace—I say in passing that I welcome the creation of the NATO Integrated Cyber Defence Centre in Belgium—but increasingly not just in cyberspace but on land, sea, air and in space. Enemies attack us too on our own territory. We also have to defend ourselves increasingly against pandemics, floods and other climate catastrophes.

In addition to our academic health researchers and our meteorological experts, the logistical experience of our military was crucial during the pandemic and recent floods, and the strategic defence review must appreciate that we need more men and women who are trained to assist us in all forms of defence, not just more of the technology of war. We need to have enough people with a range of skills for all defence requirements, including, but not exclusively, military requirements. A study—it has already been mentioned by another noble Lord—of how countries such as Finland, Switzerland and Sweden engage in “whole of society defence” of their countries would pay dividends.

It is not just our country that is under attack: the whole of the global rules-based system is in peril. We must insist that not only our enemies but, even more importantly, our allies are committed to the force of law, not the law of force. When President Putin disregarded the rule of law and attacked Ukraine, we rightly stood in defence of Ukraine and against that aggression. But it is now clear beyond peradventure that not only has Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza been characterised by crimes against humanity, and by an utterly disproportionate reaction to the ghastly, horrible, unjustifiable Hamas attack on 7 October, but that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is illegal and has been illegal for decades. It is no longer a question of political negotiation of a two-state solution, and I have repeatedly told the House it is past time for that: any negotiation should be about how to implement international law. With a Prime Minister who is a distinguished lawyer, I hope this country will take the lead in the defence of the international rules-based order.