EU Foreign and Security Strategy (EUC Report)

Lord Horam Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Horam (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, who has just concluded his remarks, mentioned a previous report from the sub-committee on the European Union and Russia. He was on the committee at the time and I was not, so I can honestly say that it was a superb report and a great credit to the chairman, my noble friend Lord Tugendhat. I pay tribute to him, too, for his work during that period. It is such a pity that he has to resign from the chairmanship under our rather brutal rules in the House of Lords.

Having said that, I want to say more about Russia, following up from what the noble Earls, Lord Sandwich and Lord Oxford and Asquith, said. In our report, we say:

“The High Representative should devote particular attention to the issue of EU policy on Russia”.

As has been said, we are advocating a dual-track policy—being tough when necessary but being prepared to talk and have a dialogue when we can find space for that. I shall confine my remarks to Russia, although confining is rather an odd word to use in that context, given that Russia is such a huge issue and a huge country.

I have always been a huge admirer of the Russian people and Russia. One should always remember the Great Patriotic War, as they call it, when no fewer than 28 million Soviet citizens died during the course of that struggle, which was so fundamental to the defeat of Hitler. That leaves aside the great Russian cultural history—their opera, ballet and literature. I have recently seen “Boris Godunov” at the Royal Opera House and, like others, watched “War and Peace” on TV. One thrills at what Russia has contributed to the world; it is a country that has been, and always will be, in the front rank of nations.

However, Russia appears to be run today by the lineal descendants of the KGB. President Putin is a former KGB man, and many of the people at the top of the Government have a security background. Their interest appears to be in power politics and, most of all, in remaining in power themselves. As a consequence of that, they have taken to bullying their immediate neighbours fairly outrageously. In her excellent book Beyond Crimea, which has just been published, Agnia Grigas points out the sophistication and thought that has gone into many of the battery of weapons that they have used on their immediate neighbours. For example, they have exploited the 30 million Russians who were left outside Russia itself when the Soviet Union collapsed and are now all over Ukraine, Kazakhstan and so on. In the second city of Estonia, Narva, which is on the border of Russia, 80% of people are Russian speakers. Equally, they have conducted information warfare through their control of television—they control all four major TV channels in Russia—and put a message across that is deeply hostile to the West and portrays us as weak and ineffectual. The contradiction between those two points of view does not seem to have struck them; it is what they consistently say. All that appeals to Russia’s sense of itself as a continuing empire, under the tsars and in the Soviet Union, and its sense of insecurity and what has happened since the end of the Cold War. I can quite understand why that has left President Putin with a great deal of popularity. As has been said, that is unlikely to change in the immediate future.

How do we respond? First, we have had sanctions. The effect is unclear. In addition, we need a big information effort. In January last year, Britain, Denmark, Estonia and Lithuania called on the European Union to create an information alternative to Russian propaganda. That is tremendously important in the views of people in eastern Europe and should be put into action forthwith.

Outside the European Union, we have to recognise that the Baltic countries are the Achilles heel of NATO. They need to be reinforced militarily. At the moment the Anaconda wargames are going on in Poland. I welcome that. The Poles point out that there is constant activity on the other side of the border. We occasionally do it, but we should be alive to the situation there. We should support Ukraine, which is not part of NATO, with training and equipment as far as it possible to do so in its rather desperate situation. We have to hope and expect that many of these countries—Ukraine, Estonia and so forth—will reform themselves, encourage the inclusiveness of Russian speakers as well as native speakers and become less corrupt and more like a truly western country.

If we respond in this co-ordinated and coherent way, I am not pessimistic about the future—although I agree that the future may be a long time off. Russia must wonder whether it can sustain all the foreign and military policies which it has embarked on. I noticed what the noble Earl, Lord Oxford and Asquith, said about the possible effects of sanctions, but other estimates suggest that Russia has lost out to the tune of $140 billion a year as a result of the combination of the reduction in the oil price and economic sanctions. I noticed an article in the Times the other day which suggested that ordinary people in Russia were suffering from economic sanctions, whatever the elite may be doing. Dmitry Medvedev, the Prime Minister, was heckled by a pensioner who had not had her pension increased for two years in a row. He said: “There’s no money”—a familiar cry to Conservatives:

“‘When we find the money, we’ll make the adjustment’, a ruffled Mr Medvedev added, before shouting over the woman’s protests: ‘You hang on in there. Best wishes! Cheers! Take care!’

A pizza restaurant in St Petersburg swiftly put a poster in its window advertising: ‘Sale! Margarita pizza for members for parliament and government officials—price €100 … If you don’t have the money, just hang on in there! Be well and good luck!!’ … internet wags soon followed, with images including an empty toilet roll holder above a sign reading: ‘No paper. But hang on in there. Best wishes, cheers, take care’”.

They have not lost their sense of humour in Russia, but I wonder whether ordinary people are suffering rather more than we know.

Secondly, Russian tactics do not always work as well as it hopes. Russia may have gained, temporarily, Luhansk and Donetsk, and the Crimea possibly even permanently, but it has lost Ukraine. There is nationalist sentiment there of an order that was not apparent in previous years. The 30 million Russian speakers outside the borders of Russia are, according to the evidence, clearly becoming cynical about how they are used by Russia rather than feeling that it has their true interests at heart. If we look at the true interests of the Russian people and of Russia itself, surely they are better served by Russia being the ally of the West rather than being for ever palpably hostile and accusing us of being hostile when clearly we are not. Russia would be better off economically if it was an ally of the West and would be more able to deal with the real problems which we all face, such as Islamic extremism and, particularly in Russia’s case, Chinese expansion. Surely that common interest that underlies it must become apparent in our globalised world, where knowledge and information eventually can get through, but I stress that we need to make an effort to ensure that it does.

Finally, I refer my noble friend Lady Anelay, who will wind up this debate, to the remarks made recently by Mr Sikorski, a former Polish Foreign Secretary, that if Britain wants to play to its strengths—foreign policy and defence policy—it has a role to play in these matters on the eastern borders of the European Union. I hope that it will be able to play that role—obviously, we await the result of the referendum—and that it will do so.