Ukraine: Tactical Nuclear Weapons

Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

My Lords, I echo the tributes already paid to my noble and right reverend friend Lord Harries.

I decided to put my name down for this debate having seen two things on Sunday. The first was a piece in the Sunday Times, no doubt applauded by the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, which said that although the West has frozen $350 billion worth of Russian assets, none of it is available to start paying the, as it happens, roughly equivalent figure necessary by way of reparations to repair some of the devastation that Russia has wrought in Ukraine in this bestial war of theirs.

Secondly, there was a most interesting broadcast on BBC Two by Simon Sharma, which discussed the brutalising effects of totalitarianism on the bodies, minds and spirits of the population, the potentially liberating effects of artistic endeavours which expose and challenge those tyrannies, from people such as Picasso—one pictures “Guernica”—George Orwell, Václav Havel and Pasternak, and why these sorts of people come into it. I strongly recommend this programme to your Lordships.

I also recommend a film from 2019 which I was only alerted to recently, “Mr Jones”. It is the true story of a brave young Welsh journalist who, in 1933, disbelieving the story of the triumphant success of Stalin’s economic policies, goes to Moscow, slips his Intourist leash, goes to Ukraine and finds the devastation, the starvation, the ghastly effects of this policy. I remind your Lordships that Stalin once again is a revered figure in present-day Russia.

There can be only one acceptable outcome to this war. It is essential not only for the future of Ukraine and its security but for the future of the West and democracy itself. Russia certainly must not be seen to win and therefore must be seen to lose this war. That must be recognised internationally if not domestically in Russia. Putin cannot remain on the scene ideally. No doubt he will be in some war crimes tribunal.

How is this to be achieved? Certainly, Ukraine must recover its original borders. There are deep and difficult questions about the future status of Crimea. There are many arguments, and it may be up for grabs, but NATO must guarantee Ukraine’s integrity, save for, conceivably, Crimea. I am much indebted to the Library note, which unsurprisingly suggests that the greatest possible risk, of any nuclear force, although it is still unlikely, would be if Russia were on the brink of defeat in the land war. However, if you recognise that this war against Russia must be won, that point must inevitably come, and the sooner the better, because every week and month of this conflict that passes, Ukrainians are suffering most desperately and outrageously, as has been described.

We should be taking this war to Russia at least to this extent. We should not only be doing everything conceivable to strengthen Ukraine’s defence of its own territory against these ghastly infrastructures strikes but supplying Ukraine so that they can attack the infrastructure necessary in Russia to support the Russian land forces. It would not be mirroring the war crime of attacking their civilian population so as to kill its morale, but stopping the supplies from reaching the land force and keeping it going. We should also be targeting whatever launch sites there are on ships in the Black Sea and on the Crimea launch pads of the incoming missiles. That far we should be going.