Libya

Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts

Friday 1st April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords, I imagine that I speak for many people on both sides of this Chamber when I say that, for all the hesitations that I might have had at the outset about our involvement in Libya, now that our forces are engaged alongside our allies I totally support this operation. Like all of us, I pray for the lives of our very gallant service men and women and for the success of our arms.

I thank the Government for giving us the opportunity to have this debate today and for essentially offering to listen to what Parliament has to say before important decisions are taken. I want to comment on three of the potential decisions that are coming up in the short term and then make another set of observations about the wider picture in the medium and longer term.

I am not one of those who believe that we have to have a Security Council resolution whenever we take military action anywhere. I do not believe that at all. However, it is important that, having gone to all the trouble that we have gone to and having used up our credibility in the United Nations and the Security Council to get these two resolutions, we observe the maximum good faith in complying with them. Therefore, it is absolutely clear that we should follow the spirit as well as the letter of 1973 and not deploy ground troops in Libya.

I have many reasons for not wanting to deploy ground troops. First, there are the practical difficulties, including the difficulty in extracting them and the complications that a ground campaign always involves. It is clear to me that we should take that view of the meaning of the resolution. Certainly anything more than the rapid insertion and extraction of Special Forces, if they are needed for some special operation, should not be contemplated.

Secondly, for the same reason, we have to take a clear view that the resolution bans the sale or provision of arms to anybody in Libya, so the idea of arming rebels must be out of the question. There are good practical reasons for not doing that, particularly if you do not know much about who these people are and to what use these weapons might ultimately be put in future years. That should be completely excluded.

Thirdly, there should be no question of our targeting Colonel Gaddafi. I deplore the remarks of the Secretary of State for Defence in the media when he implied that he thought that the UN resolutions were at least a cover or excuse for targeting Gaddafi. They are nothing of the kind. Again, it would be extremely damaging to our position in the United Nations and in the world if we were to breach the spirit of the resolutions in that way. It would be bad for the standing of the western world as a whole if it appeared that we were arrogating to ourselves the right to eliminate or assassinate any leaders of third-world countries whom we wanted to remove. It must be rather humiliating that the Secretary of State was contradicted and corrected on the radio the next morning by the Chief of the Defence Staff on that important matter.

Looking at the wider picture and the medium and longer term, I am not someone who believes in the concept of active, ethical foreign policies or liberal interventionism, as it is often called. One can always make a strong moral argument for intervention anywhere in the world to try to save lives or to help people; the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, with his usual eloquence, made a strong case for that this morning. Other motives also come into play. Unfortunately, such operations seem to have a fatal attraction for a certain type of Prime Minister as an ego trip but, whether the motives are very pure and very good or less pure and less good, we should exert a degree of self-discipline and use our arms quite strictly to defend ourselves and our allies when they are attacked, or in the necessary defence of our vital interests. We should be quite clear about that.

I have three reasons for saying that, two of which are permanent and long-standing and one of which is related to the present situation and conjuncture. The first of these is often given, so I need not dwell on it: it is almost impossible to predict in advance how a military operation will develop. There are always enormous risks in any kind of intervention. One can easily find oneself welcomed on day one as a liberator and then spat at or shot at only a month later as an unwanted invader. In the enthusiasm or moral conviction of the moment, it is easy to underestimate the risk of such operations.

My second reason, which is a strong one, is that a moral foreign policy almost certainly becomes a contradiction in terms. You get no moral credit for a moral foreign policy, nor can you. You are absolutely bound to end up in all kinds of contradictions and inconsistencies, which immediately undermines any ethical or moral conviction that you might wish to project. We are involved in Libya at present but, as has been said, why not in Ivory Coast, where there is an equally strong or an even greater case for humanitarian intervention? Why not in Zimbabwe or Somalia, or the Congo, where millions of people have been killed in civil wars over the past 20 years? Would we intervene in China to defend Tibet against destruction? The answer is clearly and obviously no. Immediately one is involved in these contradictions.

I have not been in the Middle East in the past two weeks, but I am absolutely certain that there must be many people there saying today, “Why is it that the West is supporting democracy in Libya against Gaddafi but not supporting democracy in Bahrain against the Khalifa Government?”. In answer to that, they say, “Ah, the Khalifa Government are the pawns of the West. They are the allies and friends of the West and Gaddafi is their enemy”. Ultimately, you end up with a reputation not merely for selfishness, which you get if you have a policy simply based on your own self-interest, but also for duplicity and hypocrisy, which is not helpful. One has to impose a certain self-denying ordinance on oneself for those reasons.

Unfortunately, there is a specific reason today why we should take a very restricted view of the extent to which we can extend our overseas military commitments. This Government, since they came to power some 10 months ago, have seriously eroded our defence capability. In just a few months, they have destroyed our maritime surveillance capability. They have decommissioned the Nimrod aircraft. They have got rid of battle tanks and helicopters. I am told that 10 of the 22 Chinooks that I ordered are being cancelled. Most horrific of all, they have decommissioned the Harriers and got rid of our carrier strike capability, a capability that could be very useful at the present time in Libya. When I denounced this decision a couple of months ago as short-termist and irresponsible, little did I think that within a few weeks we would live to regret it. Those Harriers could have been enormously valuable to us to support the operations on which we are now launched.

I fear that everything that I am hearing is that the coalition Government are determined to go on with these defence cuts, that this is not the end of the story and that they regard the defence budget as a kind of milk cow so that they can continue to get more and more money. I hope that it is a consolation for the pilots who have been laid off and for our defence forces that the Government see fit to give £200 million a year to India, which is twice what would have been required to maintain our own carrier strike capability. India is increasing its defence spending by more than 6 per cent per annum and is building up a carrier strike capability of its own. In my view, this is a disastrous policy. To extend our commitments while reducing our resources seems to me to be the very essence of irresponsibility and recklessness. The Government must understand that, if they wish to will the end, they must will the means.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

My Lords, I begin by thanking all noble Lords who have spoken and the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, who spoke for the Opposition, for their very positive support for the overall pattern of government policy and for the trend and direction we are seeking to go in. No one is going to claim—I shall not—that there is complete certainty and that we can predict exactly what is going to happen. We cannot. There are risks and twists and turns ahead that none of us can foresee, but the general support is strong, and that is very gratifying. What is even more gratifying for all of us, and it will be gratifying for our Armed Forces, is the praise for the way they are performing, as usual, with efficiency, precision and determination. We have our debates across the Floor about equipment and resourcing generally—they have gone on almost regardless of who is in government—and we are right to be concerned about them, but our Armed Forces are composed of very dedicated, brave and courageous people. There is no question about that. That shows up in moments of crisis.

It is not physically possible for me to address every one of very many fine speeches that have been made this afternoon, so I shall just have to make my peace afterwards with noble Lords I do not mention. I will try to cover as best I can a number of specific questions that have very properly been put to me. I am sure I shall not achieve total satisfaction; in fact, I know I will not. We will just have to do our best and sort things out afterwards.

I shall deal first with the great general questions that have dominated the debate this afternoon. The first and central question is: are we sticking to the resolutions? We have the legal cover of the two resolutions: Resolution 1970 and Resolution 1973. Are we adhering to them? The answer is an emphatic yes. We believe we are in every respect. There were questions about how they should be interpreted and whether they allowed certain developments. I am not going in any particular order, but I come to the very authoritative comments on the resolutions by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy. I point out to her and to others who are quite properly examining this problem that Resolution 1973 authorises “all necessary measures” to protect civilians,

“notwithstanding paragraph 9 of resolution 1970”.

That is why it is seen as a powerful resolution that fully covers what the allied coalition forces, including HMG’s forces, are doing. That is why there has been a wider debate on how much more it would permit. We must distinguish between legal advice from the expert lawyers on what it would permit and what is actually intended. One of the questions that came up, which my right honourable friend the Prime Minister dealt with, is, “Would it cover the arming of the rebels?”, as opposed to, “Do you intend to arm the rebels?”. As far as the first question is concerned, there is a legal opinion, which may be disputed by other expert lawyers because—surprise, surprise—not all the lawyers agree with each other, that in certain circumstances it would permit the arming of rebels. Is there a policy intention so to do? No, that is not the intention at this stage, but nevertheless there is a resolution standing and that is how it could be interpreted.

The bigger question that has run through the debate is not so much about whether we arm the rebels as who the rebels are. What exactly is their provenance? Are they a mixture of people, are there good and bad among them, and how do we distinguish between them? The answer is that it is not easy. We are maintaining a regular dialogue with the Interim Transitional National Council in Libya. Both my right honourable friends the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary met Mr Jabril, one of the most prominent leaders of the national council, when he visited London earlier this week. We have sent an initial mission to Benghazi which has been successful and plan to follow up with a second mission very soon. We will be exploring the humanitarian reconstruction and development needs as a priority, and we are actively considering what assistance we can provide within the provisions of UNSCR 1970 and 1973. That both answers the question about what we are doing and enables us to establish a channel through which we can assess more clearly the nature and resource of the people operating, whether they are people we would not wish to associate with, and so on. These things cannot be answered in precise terms from the Dispatch Box now or at any point in the near future, but this is what is happening.

Another general question that we have all asked each other during the debate is: what happens next? There is of course the first Libya Contact Group meeting in Doha in a fortnight’s time, which I described in my earlier comments. However, once again, it would be foolish for anyone at this Dispatch Box to claim that they could predict exactly what the course of events on the ground will be. In my opening speech I mentioned that the Gaddafi regime’s forces—including some mercenaries, a point made by one of your Lordships—had very recently made some substantial advances again. But the tide can flow either way and things may look very different in two weeks’ time.

I turn to the important point made repeatedly by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and many others: how do we maintain and mobilise this vast coalition of forces—forces which have their origins far outside the old traditional pattern of the western alliance—and how do we keep the momentum going? This is exactly what the contact group will address and increasingly focus on. Clearly, as was said at the London conference on Tuesday, the need is not just for involvement in the immediate problems of preventing civilians being slaughtered in large numbers, which is what the immediate mission is all about, but for mobilising to support Libya with a really cohesive and effective post-conflict strategy. Some people, looking back to the light and shade of the Iraq conflict, would say that that was what was missing in that campaign. A post-conflict strategy was not there and the whole pattern, which was declared wrongly in its first military days as one of total success then spiralled downwards into appalling years of slaughter and bloodshed. That we do not want to see again, ever.

Those are the general themes that emerged in the debate and these are my general answers, always with the necessary qualification that none of us can see exactly how this situation is going to pan out over the next few days or weeks. Our aim is the protection of civilian life and our political strategy has been openly declared by Ministers, by the Arab League and by many countries around the world, which is that the world would be a much better place and Libya would be in a much better situation if Gaddafi and his gang were to go. That is our political strategy which is being backed up by pressures of the financial and trading kind, and all kinds of other pressures which I cannot go into now. That is the pattern of activity as we go forward.

I now come to a range of specific issues that were raised by your Lordships and I will try to address them by name. The noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, made an obviously very learned and well-informed speech. She rightly said that we must be on our guard over the presence of dark forces such as al-Qaeda. As far as Yemen is concerned, she is absolutely right. There is a real al-Qaeda problem in northern Yemen. It is not the only problem in Yemen, which is in a very dangerous situation, as I said in my opening speech. We have advised British nationals, and I would advise all other nationals, to get out as quickly as they can, because if the explosive situation occurs, the first thing that will be closed and inaccessible is the airport. We have been advising for some time all our nationals to get out. But the al-Qaeda danger is there.

That danger may be in other of the countries where there is protest—there are only traces—but it is interesting how, as the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, was saying, Egypt and Tunis and, as far as we can tell, in the completely different situation in Libya, the jihadist extremist element has been invisible: it has not been there. That is not to say that al-Qaeda strategists—if there are such people—and those who are looking for the opportunity for more murder and mayhem will not be studying the situation and seeing what they can make out of it, but at the moment they have not been playing a leading part. They are not part of the cause of and motivation for what is happening.

The noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, also said that I was a bit sanguine on oil prices. Her judgment may be better than mine, but it is a bold person who predicts oil price movements in the future. It is rather like currency movements: one does not know at all what will happen. Generally, at the moment, it seems that oil markets have not exploded in the way they did in some of the oil shocks of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. They have not even risen to the heights of 2008. There are factors, even as the world recovers from recession, that seem to be calming the overall energy markets. Of course, that could change.

How will Qatar go through the mechanism of trading and selling Libyan oil from the Libyan fields under opposition control and use the money for humanitarian support for the opposition forces? That has yet to be worked out and I cannot give the noble Baroness a precise mechanism by which that will be done, but a lot of work is going on at the moment.

My noble friend Lord Trimble and several other noble Lords all raised the question of the EU’s role in all of this. As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, the German abstention had been in his words “a major blow”. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, referred to that in a well-informed speech. Obviously, this meant that the initial impact of the role of the EU was not as co-ordinated and focused as it should have been. But the EU has collectively and strongly condemned Colonel Gaddafi's policies and person. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said that he hoped the EU would rise to the occasion. So do I. It seems to me possible and hopeful that that will happen. The EU Council conclusions welcomed Resolution 1973 and the Council expressed its determination to contribute to its implementation as well. That is where it has got to and maybe it will now develop further thoughts.

We had some debate this afternoon on whether the EU should develop a military dimension. I cannot comment on whether that will happen. For the moment, what we see is that NATO has taken the lead, as the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, rightly said. NATO is in charge; it is the one body that has acted extremely swiftly and effectively. I suspect that will be the way forward with it as the organising force. If there are additional humanitarian roles that the EU can play, those will be very welcome indeed.

My noble friend Lord Bates asked where the African Union featured in the pattern of things. We know that there will be a diverse range of views among African states. That is not surprising; one or two African states were always traditionally supporters of Colonel Gaddafi. He spread a lot of money around in Africa, no doubt in trying to buy other friends as well. However, the African Union has condemned what Colonel Gaddafi’s regime is doing and continues to support our actions in Libya, particularly our objective of protecting civilians and securing an end to the violence perpetrated by the Gaddafi forces. That is the African Union's position and while I cannot guarantee this, I understand that it will be represented at future meetings. We shall be working very hard to see that it is involved.

My noble friend Lord Bates made another interesting point which had not really occurred to me. He said that it was perhaps not right to refer to one possible outcome in Libya—it is not one I hope for—as a civil war, because that would somehow immediately give credibility to the Gaddafi side of it. As he rightly said, this is not a civil war but a very cruel and dangerous dictator inflicting hideous damage on his own citizens. Somehow, a civil war sounds a little more respectable than that, which it is not.

My noble friend also asked about Italy. The Italians have made a significant contribution to the military effort, including surveillance, air defence and ground attack planes as well as maritime assets. As of yesterday, we understand that Italy had 12 aircraft, four ships and one submarine under NATO command for use in Libya. Some air operations have of course been from Italian airbases as well, so the contribution has been substantial. I could go into the longer-term history of Italy's connection and involvement with Libya but that would take much too long. That raises investment and oil production issues but Italy has been active in recognising the need for the sort of action that we are seeking to take.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds asked about the Middle East peace process, as did a number of your Lordships. We are pushing as hard as we can for the parties to return to negotiations as soon as possible and we are co-ordinating closely with France and Germany as the so-called E3. We have set out our views on what the parameters for negotiations should be: the 1967 borders, with arrangements to protect Israel’s security; preventing the resurgence of terrorism; having a just, fair and agreed solution to the refugee question; and, fulfilling the aspirations of both parties for Jerusalem. We have debated those matters again and again in this House and they are very familiar to us. If we can get some movement on that now, even among the general turmoil of the region, that in our view will be a major step forward.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, asked in addition about the Ivory Coast, which is not exactly in our brief today but indicates how broad a canvas we are dealing with. The situation in the Côte d'Ivoire is moving fast. We are committed to the crisis being resolved and President Ouattara taking up the office to which he has been democratically elected. The obstruction of the democratic process and associated violence raises broad concerns that affect the global community and democracy in Africa. As the noble Baroness can hear, I am reading out a suggested brief from officials in my department which does not give much information beyond what we knew already, However, from what I have seen for myself in the newspapers the situation in Abidjan is very dangerous and there will obviously great violence before President Gbagbo, who was declared to have been unelected long ago, finally surrenders. If more of his troops desert, that would finally bring him down. Côte d’Ivoire is perhaps an example of the general point that we cannot engage in everything, but that does not rule out our need to focus carefully on certain selected areas. That we are focusing on Libya seems to be entirely right.

Some, such as the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, have asked whether we should not have the same sort of policy approach towards Bahrain. We argue that that is a completely different position. We have to be selective, use our judgment and accept that in Bahrain there is a different set of issues. We are clear that the Government of Bahrain and their security forces should respect the civil rights of peaceful protesters. We have called for an end to all acts of harassment by the Bahraini security forces. We are in direct contact with the Bahraini authorities and their leaders and have insisted that they show real leadership in promoting tolerance, equal access to justice and the rule of law. They are seeking a reform process and, as the noble Viscount, Lord Slim, urged, we should be very firm in pressing it on them, as indeed we are. However, to compare the situation there with Libya is to make a large jump in logic that is not justified.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I entirely agree with the Government about Bahrain. The point that I was making was simply that there are inevitably going to be people misinterpreting the position. Once you get into an active, interventionist foreign policy, people will always try to find areas where we appear to be acting inconsistently and hypocritically.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

That is a fair point, which I think the noble Lord recognises is a point of argument rather than of policy, and I accept it.

The noble Lord, Lord Stone, comes forward in these debates with marvellously constructive proposals for really making things hum on the ground. He spoke about opening small businesses, retail shops and so on, which are the lifeblood of almost all the economies that we are talking about and without which they will never prosper again. He said that our powerful supermarket chains in this country could help. These are fascinating proposals; I shall take them away and study them as closely as his earlier proposals in a debate that we had a few weeks ago about Palestine.

The noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, wanted to know what the Prime Minister meant on the recognition issue when he said that we recognise countries, not Governments. I would use almost the same words although perhaps I would say that we recognise states, not Governments. I do not see the difficulty that the noble Lord is having over this. States have Governments that are lawful; if there is not a lawful Government or no clear Government, there is no basis for recognition. At the moment we recognise those countries that have a lawful Government. Even if they are in a state of hostility, we still recognise them. I am not too sure that I see the problem. Perhaps he can explain it.