Defence, Diplomacy and Development Policy

Lord Houghton of Richmond Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

My Lords, I add my welcome to the noble Baroness, Lady Penn. On the grounds of age alone, she is a most welcome addition. I am an ex-Chief of the Defence Staff and was well turned 60 when I arrived, but I still feel slightly intimidated by this place, so she is in good company.

I am delighted to make a small, short contribution to this important debate. I am moved to do so primarily because of concern that a debate that talks about the integration of defence capability into diplomatic and development policy may run the risk of obscuring defence’s prime purpose. In making this point, nothing I have to say fundamentally parts company with the words of my former boss—and I hope, therefore, friend—the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton. I start by emphasising that I absolutely support the idea—not new—that the available spare capacity of the Armed Forces should be beneficially employed on such things as pre- and post-conflict stabilisation operations, capacity-building tasks and peace-support operations.

I also recognise that there will inevitably be times of crisis, both at home and overseas, when it will be entirely appropriate to employ the Armed Forces to help resolve such crises. I spent much of my active career involved in crisis response, whether it was Ebola in Sierra Leone, hurricane relief in the West Indies, providing Olympic security or eliminating foot and mouth disease. Armed forces are highly useful assets.

As an aside, I was often surprised that wider government did not always recognise that the most important capability that the Armed Forces contributed to any crisis resolution was an ordered system of command and control, and I firmly believe that any integrated review of defence and security would do well to recognise our national deficit in the standing architecture of command and control for domestic crisis.

However, I go back to my main point. The beneficial involvement of defence capability with the softer skills of diplomacy and development should not detract from the primary function of the Armed Forces. Our primary purpose is complementary to, not permanently integrated with, soft power. This is a subtle but important difference. Increasingly, defence capability has a significant role to play in ameliorating some of the security risks that emanate from what are termed the new vectors of threat, particularly in the new domains of space, cyber and so on. However, the major contribution of defence, in the current and foreseeable global context, is to provide the effective deterrence that buys time for diplomacy and development to do their job in helping to remove the potential causes of conflict.

I stress again that, at the tactical level of integration, defence can and should support diplomatic and development goals, but we must not slip into the somewhat deluded mindset that starts to make such activity the raison d’être for armed forces. We should constantly be mindful that defence is built on a subtle paradox: the more capable it is, the less likely it will be called upon to be used. That is especially so when, given that we currently live in relatively peaceful times, we might slip into the belief that, in some remarkable way, peace has somehow become naturally occurring. That is not something that I recognise.

The only other marker that I would lay down at this point is: whatever the outcome of the forthcoming review, defence should not be left in the difficult situation where the capability it purports to have bears little relationship to the available funding. There is nothing more frustrating or demoralising than to be institutionally underfunded and yet not be allowed to admit it.