Ukraine

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Friday 25th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I add my welcome to this House to the noble Lord, Lord Spellar. He and I have been on the NATO Parliamentary Assembly for some time, during which time he has demonstrated a certain steel in his support for NATO, a steel no doubt tempered during his time fighting the communists in the electricians’ union. I look forward to his contributions in the future, which I know will be very robust.

The NATO Parliamentary Assembly reiterates all the time that we cannot afford to let Ukraine lose the war against Russia. All I would say is that, if that is the attitude of the West, it has a very funny way of going about it. Let us face it: we win wars by the grim determination of our troops on the ground—the Ukrainians have demonstrated that in full—and with technology. Every time there has been a suggestion of new, advanced technology being deployed in Ukraine, there has been delay and prevarication, whether it is tanks, F16 aircraft or missiles. We are still arguing, as the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, mentioned, about whether Storm Shadow can be used in Russia. We should be firing cruise missiles into Russia. They have a 1,000-pound warhead and could do incredible damage when they arrive, but they are not being allowed to do so. All the time, we are saying that we support Ukraine and want Ukraine to win, but then we do not give it the kit to do so.

Let us be honest: even if we did deploy this technology, we would adjust the stalemate that exists in Ukraine a little in its favour, but we would not win the war. The only way to win the war is by deploying air power, which is where we have effortless superiority over Russia. That would make a serious difference. I am not going to push that case yet again, because I know there is no support for it and everybody thinks it would end in the third world war, which I do not think is true. The problem is this whole attitude towards escalation, which has come from the United States, and particularly from an adviser called Jake Sullivan. There is an election coming up and one of the great advantages is that he will presumably move on and somebody else will take over. His advice to Biden has always been that we risk escalation the whole time in anything we do in Ukraine, and therefore we do not want to up the ante at all. On that basis, you never win anything.

I want to return to a recent Question Time, when the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, said that the future of Ukraine lay in Ukrainian hands. I am afraid that this is not wholly accurate. The future of Ukraine and of this war lies with the United States of America. It is the major donor to Ukraine and, if it threatens to withdraw the support that it gives, Ukraine will have to comply. If Trump wins the election in a fortnight’s time, he has said—I do not know whether he will keep to this—that he will force a peace deal on Ukraine before he is inaugurated. If Harris wins, I suspect the same process will take place but it will just take a little longer. The West is not going to live with a stalemate in Ukraine. Indeed, one slightly argues, what is the point of living with a stalemate? If you stand to win the war ultimately, there is some point in hanging in there. If you are never going to win, which is the position we are in now and I cannot see it changing, we might as well settle sooner rather than later.

Then we have to consider what will actually happen. The Americans will go to Kyiv and tell Zelensky that he has to settle; Zelensky will say he does not want to settle; and the Americans will say, “If you don’t, we will cut off all arms supplies, you will lose the war even more heavily and you will have a worse settlement at the end than you would if you did it now”.

We must look to the security guarantees that Ukraine puts in place to make sure that it does not get invaded again. Ukraine keeps saying that it needs to join NATO. I have to say that it is never going to join NATO as long as it has a frozen conflict with Russia and Russia occupies a lump of its country, which is likely to be the outcome of any peace agreement. Therefore, we should look to other people within NATO. I look to the Joint Expeditionary Force, set up by NATO in south Wales in 2015, and made up of the Baltic states, Norway, Denmark and Holland, led by the British. In 2017, two additional members joined the Joint Expeditionary Force, the two neutral countries of Sweden and Finland, neither of which were, at that stage, members of NATO, so there is no reason why Ukraine should not join the Joint Expeditionary Force. The British Ministry of Defence, because it does not want to be seen to split NATO, constantly says that the Joint Expeditionary Force is mainly a training organisation. I am fine with that. Let us set up training in Ukraine, both for aircraft and for troops on the ground, so that we have a NATO presence in the post-war settlement. We must have F35s, because they are critical, but let us have them training in the Ukraine, which will act as a deterrent to Russia ever invading again.