Queen’s Speech

Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

My Lords, two grave events have occurred so far this year, the full import of which has not yet been fully appreciated, which threaten in its very foundations the international system with which we have become familiar and have probably taken for granted over the past decades. The Russian annexation of Crimea is the first occasion since the Second World War when frontiers have been changed in Europe by force. It is the first occasion for 50 years that that has occurred anywhere in the world, including outside Europe. I do not need to remind the House of the two occasions when an attempt was made to change frontiers by force, opposed very successfully and bravely by British forces—in the Falklands and, later on, in Kuwait. That is a position that we now face, and we have to ask ourselves what kind of precedent and uncertainties are being created and how the rest of the world will react to these new circumstances and new precedent.

The second grave event is the fact that a British guarantee has been clearly and openly violated—again, apparently, entirely with impunity. We and the United States were both signatories to the 1994 agreement guaranteeing the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine, which has clearly been gravely breached by the annexation of Crimea. In this country, we used to take our guarantees extremely seriously. The House will recall that we went to war in August 1914, in accordance with the guarantee that we had given to Belgium under the Treaty of London. We went to war in September 1939, in accordance with the guarantee that we had given to Poland some six months earlier. We have to ask ourselves how seriously we, let alone anyone else, will take British guarantees in future. These are incredibly serious matters.

Of course, I do not suggest that the position created by Mr Putin’s aggression is entirely analogous with that of the outbreak of the two world wars. No historical circumstances are entirely analogous anywhere—that is quite clear. But unlike the Germans in the two world wars and unlike the Soviet Union in the invasion of Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan, Mr Putin did not just send his tanks or aircraft crudely across the frontier; he used much more subtle means. He displayed his training as a KGB officer, using absolutely brilliantly a mixture of subversion, infiltration and black propaganda. The very close analogy in my view is with the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia in 1938. That was a time when Hitler was still quite cautious before he had become overconfident. He and Henlein were able to subvert Czechoslovakia, again by playing on the nationalism of the German-speaking Sudetens, and on the international sense of guilt about Germany having suffered unduly under the Treaty of Versailles. I had a terrible sense of déjà vu when I listened to the noble Lord, Lord King, talking about how we had not been sympathetic enough to Russia in recent years. Hitler’s 1938 aggression was enormously successful and very subtle, and six months after annexing the Sudetenland, with international acquiescence, he was able to take over Bohemia and Moravia and turn them into a German protectorate—and Slovakia became an independent country.

We are now facing a period of uncertainty in which many people, not just Mr Putin but others as well, will be looking for the weaknesses in the international system—how the rules have changed and how they might get away with what they had previously never considered possible. In other words, the system is under test. Our international system is under probe. The Chinese, who have recently been extraordinarily aggressive with their neighbours, will be watching events extremely carefully and drawing conclusions from all that.

What should we do? We need to do three things. First, we need to decide on the situation that we face, which I have just described. Secondly, we need to take a view on where Mr Putin is going immediately from here. I think that he is likely to want to embed his gains by doing a deal with the West on the basis of the neutralisation of Ukraine. That may be on the analogy of the Austrian state treaty, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, suggested, or perhaps on the analogy of Finland in Cold War days under Presidents Paasikivi and Kekkonen. The neutralisation of Ukraine is not in itself bad, but it would be appalling if it was imposed by the West on Ukraine. What a gruesome and dreadful situation we would find ourselves facing if we in the West accepted that Crimea could exercise the right of self-determination to join Russia but Ukraine could not exercise the right of self-determination democratically to join NATO or the EU if it subsequently wanted to do so. We should not go down that road. Thirdly, we should prepare ourselves for the worst. We should consider imposing effective sanctions. We need to look very carefully at what might happen if we were to impose serious economic sanctions. I have previously suggested sanctions directed at the Russian banks.

We should certainly reverse our cuts in defence spending. In this respect, I totally endorse the powerful case made by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, and my noble friend Lord West. We and the rest of the European Union have been disgracefully cutting our defence spending for years while Putin has been increasing his, year by year, by substantial percentages. By doing what we have been doing, we could not have been sending a more effective signal of our abdication. We must reverse that position. We must also support Ukraine concretely. We should provide arms, training and intelligence support. That is enormously important.

We in the European Union need to reduce our energy dependence on Russian natural gas. I am glad that moves have been made in that direction in terms of putting LNG capability in Germany. We need to look again at putting in pipelines to bring natural gas from Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, without passing through Russia. That will be expensive, but if we and the European Union have to use public funds, that would be a good insurance premium to pay.

Finally—I know that this will be very controversial in the House—this is the moment when we need to make some progress towards a common foreign and defence policy in the European Union. It should be on the basis of every country being committed to spending 2% of its GDP on defence. This needs to be on an EU-wide basis because there are four neutral EU countries that are not members of NATO. We want to get away from the “free rider” issue and the idea that some countries can take their defence for granted. We need to make sure that we do what the Americans have for a long time been calling on us to do: become capable of taking on a greater defence burden ourselves. On that basis, we shall strengthen our solidarity with the United States and increase our credibility in the world, which so badly needs restoring after the events of the past few months.