NATO

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, this debate, coming as it does at a time when NATO is facing the greatest challenge to its future credibility and solidarity in Afghanistan, could not be more opportune. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, has therefore done us all a service in making this debate possible. It has also, of course, provided the occasion for two wonderfully eclectic and different maiden speeches. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Flight, who is looking for some co-operation between India and this country, that there is UN peacekeeping. The Indians are the biggest provider of UN peacekeepers. This country, alas, for reasons that do not need to be dwelt on at the moment, is about the smallest, but there is plenty of opportunity for co-operation there. I thought my noble and gallant friend Lord Stirrup did us a great service by taking us back to some really fundamental questions about what NATO is there for and what it should be doing.

I shall say a little bit about Afghanistan and then address two other important and often overlooked issues, the NATO/EU relationship, to which the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, has just referred, and the alliance’s nuclear posture and attitude towards the reduction or withdrawal of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, to which the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, referred.

NATO’s major involvement in Afghanistan is sometimes criticised and sometimes regretted, even by those who now support it. I am not among their number. I really do not see how NATO could have refused to get involved after an attack from Afghan territory had led to the triggering of Article 5. The rather gratuitous initial cold-shouldering by the Bush Administration, in particular by the then US Secretary of Defense, of that act of solidarity was a major political error, but it was not a justification for turning our backs when the US asked for help. In any case, that is now all water under the bridge. We cannot go back to that earlier moment of choice. What is needed now is determination to stay the course and, at the same time, an imaginative strategy for bringing the need for an outside military intervention in Afghanistan to an end. I doubt whether setting artificial deadlines for initial reductions in troop presence, such as President Obama’s summer 2011 undertaking or our end-2014 date for ending combat involvement, are at all wise or helpful if they are not in any way linked to conditions on the ground. They are far too likely to encourage the Taliban to sit it out and wait for us to go.

As for the strategy to end the need for NATO’s combat presence in Afghanistan, which should be our objective, it surely needs a much stronger regional dimension in which we work for a commitment by Afghanistan and all its neighbours to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states in the region, to non-interference, to confidence-building measures and to a programme of economic co-operation. That strengthened regional approach requires, I would suggest, more than just occasional, informal meetings of the Governments of the region, which is what has taken place so far. It requires more than just warm words and short follow-up. It needs firm, binding long-term commitments of the sort the two sides in the Cold War in Europe endorsed at Helsinki in 1975, including commitments to respect each other’s borders. That, of course, has to include the Durand line, the frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Secondly, in Afghanistan I would suggest that we need a more subtle approach to reconciling the Pashtun tribes with the central Government in Kabul, possibly revolving around some international, perhaps UN-hatted, go-between to shuttle between elements of these Pashtun tribes and President Karzai. I doubt very much whether direct contacts managed either by President Karzai or by the US or NATO military are the best way to set about achieving that reconciliation, and I would be grateful if the Minister would respond to these two points on Afghanistan.

The present state of NATO/EU co-operation, or rather the lack of it, to which the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, referred, is frankly pretty deplorable and it is damaging to both parties, as we have seen in the examples that he gave in Afghanistan and elsewhere. It leads to duplication, dangerous security gaps and to unnecessary misunderstandings. We all know why it has happened and who is responsible—Cyprus on the EU side and Turkey on the NATO side. Each has taken the organisation to which it belongs hostage and hostage-taking is a nasty habit.

It was good that last November’s NATO summit recognised that something needed to be done to remedy this state of affairs. If a definitive solution cannot be worked out by the time of NATO’s spring ministerial meeting, which is now only a few weeks away, surely the Secretary-General of NATO and the EU’s high representative have enough delegated authority to work out pragmatic arrangements for day-to-day co-operation in Brussels and wherever the two organisations are operating in the field to work together properly. Here, I very much echo what my noble and gallant friend said about finding ways to break out of the trap of consensus or at least to work a way around it in some limited manner.

Surely, the other members of the two organisations have enough influence with their partners who are preventing this to stop them meddling with or trying to block any pragmatic arrangements agreed between the Secretary-General and the high representatives. Perhaps the Minister could say what we are hoping to achieve in this matter in the next couple of months.

Thirdly, on the alliance’s nuclear posture, I very much regret that the opportunity was missed at last November’s NATO summit to adjust the alliance’s nuclear posture and to bring it into conformity with the negative security assurances given now by the US and the UK separately to non-nuclear states which are in full conformity with their non-proliferation treaty obligations; namely, that we would neither use nor threaten to use nuclear weapons against them.

What on earth is one to make of the fact that NATO does not have the same position? Are the US and the UK bound by their assurances when it acts unilaterally but not if they act as part of the alliance? It is surely desirable to clear up this ambiguity at the earliest opportunity. Similarly, it is surely equally desirable to make it clear to the Russians that the alliance is ready to work with them for the mutual reduction of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe and to do so as a matter of practical urgency now that the US and Russia have ratified, and last weekend in Munich brought into effect, the new START treaty on strategic weapons.

This subject, along with ballistic missile defence and the scope for co-operation with the Russians over that too, are matters which need to be carried forward purposefully if opportunities are not to be missed. I very much hope that the Minister will say what sort of input we are making into the follow-up work to the agreement at last November’s NATO summit to carry forward discussion of these issues.

The noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, referred to cyber, which clearly is a threat to the NATO alliance, as it is to the EU. It is a threat in security terms to NATO, and in terms of cybercrime and a lot of other issues it is a threat to the European Union. Last weekend, I was present in Munich when the right honourable gentleman the Foreign Secretary made an excellent speech about the need to face up to the threats from cyber and about his intention to bring together a conference or gathering of relevant countries here in the latter part of this year. He took an excellent initiative and, from what I could gather, it was extremely well received.

In preparing that, I hope he will cast his net fairly wide and make sure that he brings within the scope of the considerations the work being done in NATO and in the European Union, and the need to talk to countries like India, China and Russia. Although they may be, and certainly are, part of the threat, they also have to be part of the way of handling the threat if we are not to move, as we did with nuclear weapons, through a phase of mutually assured destruction before we realise that that is not a frightfully clever direction in which to be moving.

The future of NATO remains a key focus for this country’s foreign policy. But it needs to be a NATO which is adapting to new challenges and which is learning lessons from past errors. International organisations which fail to adapt, like national institutions which fail to adapt, become extraordinarily vulnerable and much less useful. It is not in our interest that NATO should fall into that sort of category.