Armed Forces Act (Continuation) Order 2017

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, it is with some trepidation that I participate in this debate, which is after all mainly about defence policy, but I do so because in my view the international rules-based order is under greater and more existential challenge than it has ever been since our predecessors began to piece it together amid the ruins of two catastrophic world wars. I do so also because those challenges and the necessary responses to them cannot be confined to the spheres of defence and security policy; they need to go much wider than that.

To understand this, along with the need for a wider vision and response, we need only look at the period between the two world wars. Of course history does not repeat itself exactly, but it does contain plenty of lessons that we would be foolish to ignore. The world experienced then a perfect storm in which economic, political and military developments fused into a single mass which overwhelmed the totally inadequate rules and international institutions that had been established after the First World War. The 1929 stock market crash led to mass unemployment, trade protectionism and tit-for-tat monetary devaluations. These and other factors fuelled the rise of populist political parties across Europe, while the weakened democracies averted their eyes and turned inwards. Does that sound familiar? Is there any parallel with the faltering response to the financial crisis of 2008-09 and the emergence of political forces such as those which propelled Donald Trump to the White House and are fuelling the political bids of Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders and Beppe Grillo? It is not an exact parallel, of course, but it is quite enough to cause us to worry very seriously.

I will look at three pillars of our rules-based order which are under threat: the open global trading system, symbolised by the World Trade Organization; the nuclear non-proliferation treaty; and the functions of the UN with respect to international peace and security. The arrival in the White House of a President and a trade policy team who seem to regard protectionism as a path to prosperity, and bilateral trade balances as something to be eliminated by any means, including by measures that would run roughshod over WTO rules, is a challenge to all of us, and in particular to this country which has, quite rightly in my view, nailed its post-Brexit colours to the mast of being a champion of free trade. That will require more than just words. It will require standing up to the forces of mercantilism and protectionism wherever they emerge and defending the rules of the WTO. If we fail, we will end up poorer and less able to generate the resources we need to defend ourselves and our allies, in NATO or elsewhere.

The nuclear non-proliferation treaty has been for a considerable time now one of the cornerstones of our rules-based world, but has been under considerable stress for some years, particularly from North Korea, which cheated on its obligations under the treaty and then withdrew, and from Iran, whose nuclear programmes gave much legitimate cause for concern. The only thing the two challenges have in common, I suggest, is that in neither case is a military response either sensible or to be anticipated or planned for, other than as an extremely last resort. There is no doubt about the immediacy and reality of the challenge from North Korea. Clearly, our own position can only be an ancillary one, but do the Government share the view that China has to be a key player in any effective response? Antagonising China, either politically or in trade policy terms, is unlikely to be the best way of securing its support.

As to Iran, we have the rather oddly acronymed JCPOA. Can the noble Earl confirm that the Government’s policy is to remain committed to that agreement and its rigorous implementation, whatever the US attitude may turn out to be? Is that policy properly understood in Washington? Is it not time, too, that we began thinking about globalising and generalising the constraints in the Iran agreement, thus extending its duration, which is rather on the short side, and ceasing to make it so Iran-specific, which makes it less attractive to Iran?

The United Nations, too, is under stress, even as it has more than 100,000 peacekeepers, both military and civilian, deployed worldwide. Often, as in South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic, they are the only forces that fulfil the responsibility to protect civilians—forces that the rulers of those countries are either unwilling or unable to provide. The Government’s decision to strengthen our commitments to UN peacekeeping in South Sudan and Somalia is very welcome. Can the Minister say something about the Government’s medium and long-term policies on UN peacekeeping? Is the shift in policy we have seen in the last year here to stay? Is it built in to our security strategy and destined to play a more prominent part in it than has been the case in the recent past?

Others have covered the crucial issue of NATO and the uncertainties about its deterrent capacity as a result of some of the things that the new President of the United States said during his election campaign. My neglect of that issue merely shows, I think, what an extremely wide scope for debate today has offered us and how important it is to focus on all parts of it.