EU and Russia (EUC Report)

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, we owe a considerable debt of gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, for having introduced such a perceptive and timely report on a topic of major significance for our foreign policy and that of the rest of Europe, and for ensuring that it is debated without the sort of delays to which we are all too accustomed.

I would suggest that there are few more futile efforts than that of a number of commentators who pose—and try to answer—the question of whether Ukraine or the Islamic State should have a higher priority in our foreign and security policy formulation. We do not have the luxury of that choice: both pose a fundamental challenge to the rules-based international order, which it is in our interests to sustain. Both pose threats to democracy, human rights, our security and that of our allies, with the risks of mass migration and the destabilisation of whole regions on Europe’s doorstep. I suggest that both need to be countered effectively if we do not wish to find ourselves having to take more costly decisions further down the track.

I doubt whether anyone would contest one of the report’s main findings: that we and the European Union were ill prepared for, and rather misjudged, President Putin’s reaction to the events in the Maidan and the fall of Yanukovych. I would add only that President Putin seems to have been equally ill informed and ill prepared, and equally to have misjudged the European reaction and the effects of the economic sanctions imposed in response to his illegal actions. I enter a modest plea of not guilty, as I recall a conversation in Vilnius in October 2013 with a Lithuanian parliamentarian who was exuding optimism about the future course of events, to which I replied, “Provided that there is not a Putin surprise”. Well, there was a Putin surprise. Europe’s misjudgment has given rise, as is often the case in democracies, to a rather excessive tendency to blame ourselves. Putin’s reaction, as is often the case in authoritarian regimes, consists of blaming absolutely everyone else. Neither of those reactions seen a very useful guide for future policy, so what should our future policy be?

I would certainly argue that any viable European policy needs a clear element of deterrence and containment as part of it. We should be prepared, and make sure we show others that we are prepared, to impose new economic sanctions if Russia does not stick to the letter and spirit of the Minsk agreement. There should be no question of easing sanctions unless every part of Minsk is implemented, in particular the provision for Ukrainian control and international monitoring of the whole Russia-Ukraine border. I would argue that we should also fulfil our 2% of gross national income commitment for defence spending to NATO and press others to do so, too. We should be more active in supporting NATO members closest to Russia and refuse to legitimise Russia’s seizure of the Crimea, from which President Putin has now stripped away the veil of deceit. I feel that it was a pity that Ukraine and Russia never gave any thought to the creation of a sovereign base area for Russia’s Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol. That thought may come forward in some years’ time.

I suggest that we should give no ground to Russia’s demands for a sphere of influence, any more than we ourselves should make any such demands. That includes that we should not be championing the extension of NATO’s membership. However, we also need a positive element to our policy towards Russia to match the deterrence. The report was wise to suggest that the EU should be ready in due course to explore the scope for co-operation with the Eurasian Economic Union. We should take every opportunity to make it clear that the free trade agreements with Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia were not intended to constrain—and will not constrain—or damage those countries’ trade relations with Russia. We need a massive and substantial effort to reform Ukraine’s economy and free it of the cronyism and corruption that has hitherto been its bane. Here I pay tribute to the maiden speech of the noble Earl, who knows so much more about these matters than I do and spoke very interestingly on that aspect.

With regard to Russia itself, we obviously persisted too long in nurturing the illusion that we could somehow or other bring about its transformation into a normal European state and economy just like the others. Still, were we wrong to offer help after the collapse of the Soviet Union? I myself do not think so. Clearly we must now deal with Russia as it is, but surely we do not need to leave our values outside the door when we do so.

Then there are the lessons to be learnt for our own diplomacy, on which the report has some justifiably critical things to say. If we go on squeezing the FCO and the Diplomatic Service resources, there will be more unfortunate consequences down the track. I thought that the report was a little less revealing on how on earth we came to be absent from such a key area of policy. I do not understand how we came not to be represented in the key moments in the Ukraine crisis or how we came to subcontract the main decisions to Germany and France. Where was the Foreign Secretary when his colleagues were heading off to Kiev in the crucial period of this crisis? We did not absent ourselves from the Balkans in the 1990s nor from the nuclear negotiations with Iran. As a signatory of the Budapest memorandum, should we not have been playing a more active role?

I am sure that this will not be the last occasion when we debate this range of issues, nor should it be. It is fashionable just now to lament the demise of the post-Cold War settlement in Europe and, more widely, of the overall rules-based structure of our world. However, surely we should not accept that as a given; we should be pushing back against it. To do so, we need to strengthen and increase the credibility of our main international structures of which we are members: the EU, NATO and the UN. I hope very much that the Government who are formed after the election will put that strengthening of those institutions and structures at the heart of their foreign and security policies.