Armed Forces

Lord Richards of Herstmonceux Excerpts

Monday 23rd June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Richards of Herstmonceux (CB) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, little did I anticipate back in 1971 when I joined the Army as an 18 year-old fresh out of school that one day I would be standing here in this historic place as a recently retired Chief of the Defence Staff making my maiden speech. I had no such expectations of myself nor, I promise you, did my friends. I joined the Army because my father and brother loved the life, and I thought that I would, too. This proved to be so, and it was with great pride that I spent the next 42 years among some of the finest people in this country.

I thank your Lordships for the great kindness that has without exception been shown towards me since I had the privilege of being introduced here by the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Guthrie. This kindness has been matched by the reception and humour shown by the staff of this great institution. I am hugely grateful. I take this opportunity to thank the Minister for being such a supportive and wise partner during our time together in the Ministry of Defence.

In 500 BC, the great soldier philosopher, Sun Tzu, wrote:

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat”.

Without a clear national strategy to guide decisions on what to do in places such as Syria and Iraq, it is hard to devise sound plans or detailed sub-strategies. It leads to a situation whereby we confront Iran in Syria, but seek to work with Iran in neighbouring Iraq. A reluctance to think strategically gets countries in these muddles. When people say that national strategies are outmoded and too easily overtaken by events, I retort with one word: Singapore. The reason that little nation is where she is today is that she had a clear national strategy which, while sensibly veering and hauling around its direction of travel, she has resolutely stuck to during the 45 years since that great statesman, Lee Kuan Yew, first introduced it.

I am quite clear that the prime determinant of a country’s foreign policy and its implementing strategies, including in particular its defence strategy, should be its vital national interests. Analysis based on this hard-nosed but rarely discussed calculation provides clear guidelines on when, for example, to intervene in the affairs of other nations while not, in a case such as the genocide in Rwanda, preventing intervention on moral grounds.

The biggest threat confronting the free world today is that posed by militant jihadism. All states are equally vulnerable, including many great Muslim nations. Rather than bickering, states should cohere to confront this threat through the adoption of a multidimensional strategy in which all, be it less or more, can play a constructive part. This struggle will be generational and our leaders must stop seeking short-term tactical solutions. The core of such an outcome would in the first instance be a containment strategy. Once the periphery was stabilised, one would work progressively to recover areas that had fallen under the jihadist yoke.

A key part of this containment strategy, and the biggest deduction for me from ISIL’s success in Iraq, should be a global determination to honour commitments made at the NATO summits in Lisbon and Chicago, and their non-military equivalent in Tokyo, to support the Afghan people after ISAF withdraws from the combat role at the end of this year. Eight million Afghans decisively rejected the Taliban when they courageously voted in Afghanistan’s recent elections. They, and the men and women of our Armed Forces, especially those killed or wounded in our service, deserve nothing less than that we do simply as we have promised. This is in order to prevent that country reverting to the lawless state from which—and, my goodness, our memories are as short as our wishful thinking is naive—those awful attacks on the twin towers were initially planned only 13 years ago.

Are our Armed Forces in a fit state to play their role in dealing with these and other risks to our way of life? The answer must be that their state is not good enough, but it is some consolation that it is better than that of any other allied nation’s forces except the United States. Future Force 2020, if fully funded, will ensure that our Armed Forces are effective and something of which we can be proud. However, to realise this potential, as the economy grows, routine defence spending post 2015 must increase as a minimum to 2% of GDP. If not, given the mathematics that seem stubbornly to govern defence expenditure, the size and effectiveness of the Armed Forces will inevitably deteriorate further, and this is without the need to fund new capability. We need, for example, maritime surveillance. While wishing that we had not bought two huge aircraft carriers with the opportunity costs involved, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord West, that having done so, it would be folly for us not to find the money needed to have one carrier permanently available—and, yes, we need more escorts, too.

Given the highly unstable world we live in, either the brave experiment with the Army Reserve must soon be proved to work or a new solution should be found. Any additional money spent on this must not be taken from other programmes, merely robbing Peter to pay Paul. We need constantly to improve the skills needed to defend and attack in the cyber domain if for no other reason than to ensure that we deter others from using such methods against us.

By design, we plan to go to war only with allies. It is vital that our allies start shouldering more of the burden of our collective security. It is unacceptable that the United States of America should pay so disproportionately. It is also time to re-examine our aloof attitude towards involvement in United Nations blue-helmet operations. Among other benefits, this would be a practical way to confront the scourge of violence against women in conflict, brought to our attention recently by the Foreign Secretary.

Finally, it is the quality of the people in them that distinguish our Army, Navy and Air Force from most others and allows them to achieve the great things that we expect of them. There is a societal consensus in the United Kingdom that joining the Armed Forces is a good thing, whether you are the child of a humble artisan or the heir to the throne. This will continue only if those in the Armed Forces feel properly looked after, and in this I very much include their families. The impact of getting this wrong is not properly understood in government circles. I travelled to many countries as CDS and I frequently saw fine ships tied up alongside jetties, aircraft idle in hangers and tanks sitting in sheds or good only for parades. Those nations are not able to recruit and retain the high-quality people whom we have historically succeeded in attracting to the British Armed Forces and who are in such demand around the world as role models and mentors. If we break that societal consensus by failing to look after our service men and women, we will have an Army, Navy and Air Force, but they will not be what you and I associate with this country and they will, one day, be found wanting.

Ultimately, military effectiveness, as Napoleon famously remarked, is determined by the morale of those in uniform. It is surely one of this Parliament’s principal duties to safeguard the high morale of our Armed Forces to ensure that they can rise to whatever challenge confronts them with the skill and courage that they historically always have.