Defence Policy: Deterrence
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(3 weeks, 3 days ago)
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Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, for giving us the opportunity to debate this important issue. I will talk about deterrence in the broadest sense. In so doing, I declare my interest as chair of the National Preparedness Commission.
Deterrence is not just about the ability to hit back hard against an aggressor, thereby making that aggression less likely. It is also about demonstrating a level of preparedness against the threat posed and a degree of resilience to recover quickly from any attack mounted. The first duty of government is to keep the country safe and protect its citizens. That is an essential platform on which the nation’s economic growth and prosperity depend.
Increasingly, hostile states pursue their objectives in the grey zone between peace and open conflict. Conventional campaigns are supplemented or preceded by tactics of hybrid warfare involving cyberattacks, campaigns of misinformation and disinformation, and disruption to civil infrastructure, the economy and the vital services on which citizens and communities depend. For example, we have seen a spate of unexplained fires in installations around Europe, and in the past 24 hours have read the news with great interest in that context.
Such grey-zone operations may take place without any associated conventional military activities. They are often conducted by proxies, non-state actors or groups that may be state-controlled, state-sponsored or state-tolerated; or they may be conducted by covert means. They may be plausibly deniable and, although they may fall below the threshold of armed conflict, their consequences are likely to be just as serious as those of a more conventional attack.
Recent years have seen attacks on undersea cables and fuel pipelines; cyberattacks by state-sponsored actors, such as those leading to the SolarWinds hack in 2020 or the Hafnium attack in 2021; the jamming and spoofing of navigation satellite systems; and various sorts of drone activity, which of course can be conducted from hundreds of miles away. A preparedness to respond effectively to such attacks, or to recover quickly from them, makes them less worth while for the adversary and therefore helps to deter them.
The consequences of these grey-zone activities are not just immediate or limited only to recovering from the event itself. Of course there are costs involved in addressing the immediate challenge but, more seriously, there may be a weakening of the nation’s ability to respond effectively to other attacks. More significantly, such attacks and the failure to deal with them effectively may undermine public confidence in the state and the ability of the Government to protect their citizens. That would be a win for any adversary.
Similarly, the objective of misinformation and disinformation campaigns is to sow discord and undermine faith in a legitimate, democratic Government. Such campaigns are fuelled by social media and ever more sophisticated applications of artificial intelligence, but the intent is to undermine citizens’ faith in their Government and the democratic process itself.
Dealing with such challenges may not necessarily involve a military response. It will need a response from the rest of government, local authorities, emergency services and, indeed, the whole of society. Such a level of preparedness and resilience is an essential part of the nation’s defence capability, and it has to be a key component of modern deterrence.
King’s Speech
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(4 months ago)
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Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, particularly for the very apt and interesting comparison that he concluded with. I declare my role as chair of the National Preparedness Commission.
The tone of today’s debate has been very clear. I think your Lordships all acknowledge that the world is closer to widespread war than at any time in the last 60 years, with the conflict in the Middle East, in Israel and Gaza, now threatening to involve Lebanon and Yemen. We have already seen Iran and Israel trading missiles, and they are both nuclear-capable powers. There is also Russia’s bloody and cynical invasion of Ukraine.
Let us be clear: the established world order and the post-war certainties are rapidly changing. The United States is becoming more isolationist as it surrenders its global economic supremacy, with a threat to its commitment to NATO after the elections in November, while the “deadly quartet”, as somebody called them, are becoming closer all the time.
China is investing huge sums in the critical infrastructure of Africa, Asia and Europe, buying up controlling interests in critical minerals and at the same time becoming increasingly bellicose towards Taiwan, on which we rely for semiconductors. Russia’s attacks are both kinetic, as in Ukraine, and hybrid—ask the Baltic states or Scandinavia. Remember the disruptions to pipelines or internet cables and the cyberattacks by state-tolerated groups—we have suffered some of those in the UK—to say nothing of the bot factories spreading and magnifying misinformation and disinformation. Those attacks are grey zone; they are deniable, but they are real. If they reduce the faith of our population in our elected Government and their competence, or if they undermine confidence in democracy itself, that is job done by the people who perpetrate them.
So, of course, we must be prepared to defend ourselves against the threat of war. For that, we need conventional forces and an enhanced defence budget, but we must also prepare for non-conventional disruptions inspired and caused by our enemies. A resilient nation that has preparedness built into its fabric is a nation that can recover from attacks of whatever nature. That very resilience and preparedness act as a deterrent against those who mean us harm.
The gracious Speech was based on the principle of security for all, on the basis of stability. That must mean that our other objectives should be safeguarded against being disrupted or blown off course by external challenges, whether malicious and state led or from any other cause. It means that our defence agenda must also embrace not only military threats but all the other 89 acute risks outlined in the national risk register.
Last week’s report from the inquiry of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hallett, into the handling of the Covid pandemic showed how ill prepared we were for a risk that had been at the top of that register since its first publication in 2008. It is a national imperative that we are better prepared to respond to our increasingly volatile and unpredictable world.
That includes the extreme weather events that we are increasingly experiencing as a result of climate change. Climate change will trigger mass displacement of peoples around the world—1 billion people by 2050 —with disruption of supply chains, food supplies and everything else, and the political instability that will go with it and spill over national borders and into this country. At the same time, our critical infrastructure is ageing. Much of it is from the 19th century, inadequately maintained for decades and designed for climate parameters very different from those we now experience.
The first duty of any Government is to protect their citizens. The compelling reason for investing in resilience and preparedness is to safeguard the world our children and grandchildren will inherit. That must be at the heart of our future strategy. Defence, resilience and preparedness must go hand in hand. They must be at the core of the Government’s defence and security review. Preparedness and resilience must be a central role of all government, every department and every agency—whole of society, whole of government. Our future depends on it.