Afghanistan

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Garnier (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I draw some comfort from what my noble friend Lord Godson has just said but, as other noble Lords have already said, there is no benefit in complaining today about the actions of the United States in pulling out of Afghanistan or the casuistry deployed to justify its decision, despite the obvious and terrible consequences of it doing so for the people of Afghanistan, especially the young women and girls, who face a dark future of repression and sexual abuse. But, if the 20-year sacrifice of our troops and the appalling events in Afghanistan of the last few days tell us anything—and I wish it were otherwise —they highlight some of the unwelcome but indisputable truths about our own country, our international standing, our Government and their leadership which cannot be ignored.

My noble friend Lord Hannan of Kingsclere said that we live in a time of poor options. He is right but, in a time of crisis, the United Kingdom looks to its Prime Minister for an informed opinion, resolution, clear policy, readiness for the unexpected and a sense of purpose. As a member of the United Nations permanent five and the second most important member of NATO, with a once-recognised reputation for probity, steadfastness and national honour, and as a country with the ability to project power diplomatically and militarily, we expect to have some, if not an overriding, influence on the President of the United States and other allied leaders. But it seems we have none.

Mr Biden did not ask for our views because he did not consider them important, nor us a serious interlocutor. Judging from the G7 conference in Cornwall, we are not taken seriously by the leaders of France and Germany either. It does not take much imagination to work out what Presidents Xi and Putin think. The new Government of Iran and the Afghan Taliban now know enough about us to plan their futures untroubled by concerns about what we can or might do. We have arrived at a situation where neither our closest friends nor our foes pay attention to what we say or do and our ambassador and Armed Forces are desperately trying to save people from butchery in Kabul.

When Margaret Thatcher chided President Reagan for invading Grenada, he apologised; when, at the start of the Iraq crisis in August 1990, she told President Bush Sr that

“this is no time to go wobbly”,

he remained resolute. She possessed moral, military and political strength. In the face of the greatest and most obvious foreign policy question that this Government have had to face outside Europe, we find something quite else. I am afraid that we find a failure of leadership, absence from the bridge, delayed decision-making through inadequate intelligence and poor assessment of information and a lack of preparedness. Government is difficult but it is not a branch of the entertainment business. I am not as subtle as my noble friend Lord Howard of Lympne; there is a vacuum at the head of government. It is not only nature that abhors a vacuum.