Iraq

Lord Reid of Cardowan Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

My Lords, I have no hesitation in saying that I believe that Parliament will support the Government on this today. So I want to confine myself to two simple questions. The first is: what are the political objectives? Force has no utility unless it is used in pursuit of political objectives. In Iraq they are clear: the defeat and degradation of ISIL, and support for the democratically elected Government. In Syria it is essential that we have some inkling of where the Government are going because you can separate the issue in terms of Motions but you cannot separate it in reality. It is much more complicated and more conflicted. Put simply—I disagree with a colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, on this—it is not the wisest course to try to get rid of ISIL and Assad at the same time. Both may be devils but perhaps we ought to consider at least that the devil we know may be better, at least temporarily, than the one that we are only beginning to know. That is a hard decision to make but this is realpolitik.

My second question is this: what is the strategy? Or rather, where is the strategy? By that I do not mean military strategy but what militarists would call the overarching, grand strategy. While it is doubtless necessary to degrade ISIL at the moment, we need to be alert to the contagion that has resulted in, for instance, al-Qaeda rebranding itself and murdering French citizens in Algeria last week, and attacks in Mumbai, Yemen, Somalia and so on. That is not to mention Libya, which is now an ungovernable mess—a reservoir of terrorist ammunition for the rest of the country as a result of a “tactical intervention”. That is what worries me if, on this occasion, we are confining this to a tactical intervention. If all we do is limited military intervention, push on with tactical strikes and then look for the so-called exit strategy, we will achieve nothing. We will go round in the same circle again in another part of the world.

Surely, of all the lessons of Iraq—I disagree with a lot of what I think are superficial lessons—one is that it is quite possible to win a decisive military battle: the first six days were very successful, but it was the next six years that were the problem. Building the peace is an essential part of a grand strategy. If we do not have plans to build that peace on a wider scale then we will just go back to where we were before.

Let me conclude by saying what I believe a grand strategy is about. It is not grandiose but quite simple, and I would identify three elements. First and foremost, it does not confuse combat, or even decisive battles, with winning anything other than a short-lived, fragile peace or truce, during which we will actually win the longer term.

Secondly, grand strategies cannot be delivered successfully without a wide coalition. While I welcome the Arab states being involved, the wide coalition is answered by asking not just, “Who are our friends?”, but, “What are the interests of other people?”. Given some of the threats I have mentioned, Russia, China, Iran and others have the same interests as us against that primary threat. We should be talking to them. The decision this House made in Syria last year resulted in a realignment because we moved from getting rid of Assad to getting rid of chemical weapons with the support of Russia, Iran and so on. That is the second element.

The third is that such coalitions require capacity that goes well beyond military capability. If a strategy does not include public services such as education, health, sanitation, water supplies and so on—a real intervention to establish the winning of the peace—then, as I said earlier, we may well snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. This time when we act, let us work through not only the tactical and military interventions but the grand strategy to win the peace as well as the short-term battles.