Ukraine: Defence Relationships

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, the timely, multi-headed debate of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, so well introduced by him a few minutes ago, surely requires us not only to recall but to act on Keynes’s dictum: “When the facts change, I change my views.” This is because an awful lot of facts have changed in the last few months which fundamentally affect our national security interests, and it is no good ignoring the need to change the conclusions we may previously have drawn. To recognise the need for change does not require us to admit that we were wrong before; it is just common sense.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has quite simply torn up the post-Cold War rule book on European security we all agreed to in Paris in 1990, as well as some of the basic precepts of the UN charter. The new Cold War is not going to be over any time soon; the war in Ukraine is going to require much determination and unity with our NATO and EU allies, if it is to be brought to a conclusion that does not reward Russia for its aggression and does not merely represent a prelude to further hostilities. That will require hard thought about what we ourselves are prepared to contribute to a newly shaped European security order; it will require more resources, both military and economic. It is not a beauty contest between allies. Evidently, there are consequences and reordered priorities for those—at the time, I believed they were quite well marshalled—in the integrated defence review. There should be no shame or defensiveness about admitting that. Every one of our partners is having to reorder its priorities, and some—Germany in particular—are doing so already in a much more substantial way than we have yet done.

The Indo-Pacific tilt, of which the Government are so proud, is not rendered inoperable; China’s rise and ambitions warn against that. However, the European theatre, and countering Russia’s actions, have again become our top priority. I suggest that we need to pay more attention to Africa, where we should be working in close concert with our European partners and where, together, we could make a real difference. That brings any analysis to our relationships with the EU, its member states and within NATO. Instead of working ourselves up into a frenzy about a European army, or the supposed threat from President Macron’s strategic autonomy, we should recognise that the rise in defence spending right across Europe is precisely what we have been calling for over decades. We need, as a crucial player in European security—and, with France, one of Europe’s two nuclear powers—to be there shaping its form and content, contributing constructive thinking and co-operation, not barracking from the side of the pitch.

That sort of constructive approach is what our principal ally, the United States, would like to see us making. We really should not, yet again, fall into the trap of thinking that we know better than it does what is in the US interest; we have done that quite often in the past, and it has proved pretty painful. The reality is that these fundamental shifts in the security structures around us present us with both opportunities as well as risks and costs. However, those opportunities will be realised only if we show a decent respect for other people’s priorities and not just for our own. That was how NATO was successfully fashioned in the late 1940s by Ernest Bevin, and that is how the NATO of the 2020s will be strengthened if we have the wisdom to throw our weight behind it.