Russia

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, for promoting this debate and for the constructive tone of his remarks. I shall make a few quick observations in the limited time allowed. First, it is often forgotten that although Russia has a huge land mass and many talented people, in global terms it has a dwarf economy: half the size of Italy’s, less than half the size of ours, one-ninth the size of China’s and fourteen times smaller than that of the USA. The amazing thing is how such a shrunken economy, so poorly run, manages to have such an impact on the world.

For example, Washington nowadays seems in a permanent frenzy about Russia. There is talk of a new cold war. As we have heard, Russia is conducting a vicious war in Syria, although to what end is not at all clear. It has caused mayhem in Ukraine, grabbed back Crimea, as well as chunks of Georgia, is busy doing its best to destabilise central Europe and the Balkans, developing new forms of hybrid and deceptive maskarova warfare, has forced the whole of NATO on to the alert, threatened our subsea energy links and, of course, allowed, and maybe even encouraged, a sort of botnet wild west of cyberhacking and false and fake news, through a maze of criminal syndicates, and possibly official sources as well. Russia spends about the same as the United Kingdom on defence but seems to get a lot more for the money.

Putin mark 2 in his second presidency will not, of course, last for ever, even with arranged elections, and the oil and gas revenues on which he floats will steadily drain away, like the Aral Sea, and leave a lot of Russia high and dry, regardless of any temporary OPEC deals with the Saudis. Gas sales to western Europe will fall, and so will oil and gas prices as American shale exports compete and renewables replace hydrocarbons. The danger for a weakened Russia in the longer run, as the future Eurasia emerges, is that having lost the chance to modernise back at the time of the end of the Soviet Union, it could now be bypassed while China and Europe link up. It should be careful not to become the “black hole” between Europe and China that Zbig Brzezinski called it. But in the meantime, let it be clear that despite all the talk of current bad relations, the British people feel a real warmth for the Russian people, for their heroism and their endurance. The country is rottenly led but its people are our friends. We should always make that distinction clear. However, I am afraid that is not the view of the Russian leadership at the moment, so what should be our approach?

First, it is not just a question of firm NATO military postures on the ground. Nowadays the battle is just as much via non-military means, in the narrative as on the physical front line. We are much better placed than during the Cold War. There is no coherent ideology uniting the Russians, as in communist times. Secondly the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, is right that we have to trade with Russia as much as possible. Trade and commerce are great pipelines of truth and awareness. The opening northern Arctic route should help here greatly.

Thirdly, we have to strengthen our already good cultural relations through all possible channels. Russian scholars and Russian students should be welcome here, suitably checked of course, and we have to continue with, and increase, our excellent space co-operation with Russia. Fourthly, we have to show zero tolerance for Russian criminality, wherever it occurs, including, of course, in London, as the TV show “McMafia” has shown us so vividly. Fifthly, we have to use every device of soft power and information power which the digital age allows, as the Russians themselves do, to counter Russian weaponising and twisting of information, as the Prime Minister reminded us the other day. Sixthly, we have to keep pressing all the time for Russia’s full adherence, as a nuclear power, to the disarmament treaties and processes. Seventhly, we have to focus sanctions on identified miscreants, fraudsters and rogues, such as the murderers of the lawyer, Magnitsky—I declare a former interest as an adviser to the great Bill Browder—but we should not go overboard on general sanctions, which never work well, halt trade and often have the opposite effects.

Our policies need to get smarter. We have to change the way we think about today’s world and its connections. We have to look beyond Putin to a new kind of international networking, as much non-governmental as official. I believe that is the right approach for this medium-sized, but awkward and persistent disrupter of efforts to establish a more stable world order. The Russian genius is not dead, but it is time it woke up to a transformed world.