Defence and Security Review (NATO)

Lord Soames of Fletching Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)]

May I start by warmly congratulating the Chair of the Defence Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), on what I thought was a masterly speech, both in detail and in content, and with which I agree entirely?

I think I can leave out the stuff about how we all agree that defence and security is the most important responsibility of any Government, because we all know that is the case and, by and large, we all agree on it, but the character of conflict has changed profoundly and new threats have arisen. As we look to the future and prepare for it over the next several years, we really must prepare ourselves to meet some very different challenges.

As in any other area of our public obligation, if we have a strong economy—and we do—that will enable us to build strong armed forces and obtain the structure we need. There is absolutely no point pretending that it would be sensible, wise, prudent or in the national interest not to commit to spending the 2% target. Indeed, I would go further and say that failing to do so would be a terrible slur on Britain’s honour.

The question of the threat is quite clear. Threat consists of capability and intent. So what threatens us, our way of life and our prosperity? The world wars and the cold war of the 20th century were waged between states or by sponsored surrogates. They defined our capabilities. The emerging challenges of the 21st century that threaten us, our way of life and our prosperity are not so much Médecins sans Frontières, but Menace sans Frontières. They are transnational forces such as fascist theocracies, little green men, organised crime and cyber-anarchism, and they are not defining our defence capabilities; they are merely defining our attention—and a short attention span it is, too—while our political and public intent is watered down and neutered, since today, alas, perception is reality.

The world is increasingly connected—iPads, iPhones, the internet and social media—but it is not at all well informed. The power of propaganda, mischief and misinformation allows faceless entities to shape the debate and, alas, our will. Our current narrative, I regret to say, is clumsy, outdated and thoroughly outmatched.

This last century we sought capability dominance that would overmatch our enemies, and in the round we achieved it. This century has already demonstrated possible enemies who have successfully achieved capability avoidance and are moving our best defences rapidly towards capability irrelevance. For example, strategic deterrence kept the world from war for 40 years because it deterred. Today the threat of use in North Korea and even the threat of ownership in Iran allows small nations to gain great leverage with tactical capabilities, whether real or perceived. Frankly, neither country is seriously deterred by our strategic forces, and the future holds every possibility of small-scale tactical nuclear use.

The operating environment has shifted from one of near certainty, in the cold war, to a period of uncertainty, in the war on terror, and it will move further left towards the unknown. In that space, investment in people and technology, with genuine blue-sky thinking and leading-edge research and development, will be absolutely essential while maximizing our existing equipment and capabilities through innovative integration. Colossus and Ultra shortened the second world war by two years. Who foresaw and invested in those as war weapons in 1939? Our universities and science laboratories provided the knowledge and advancement that allowed us rapidly to blend national expertise to defeat Germany. I recommend that anyone who has not yet seen the “Churchill’s Scientists” exhibition at the Science museum to do so. Today, robotics, advanced computer studies, telematics, teleonomics and bioscience offer the same, but they are not seen or really much supported by defence.

We must express the new defence challenge in terms that people can understand. There is of course a need to have contingent forces capable of operating to the old threat of war or proxy war, but that should not be the main effort. The present challenges require us to prepare for how we anticipate them to evolve, using current capabilities adapted and integrated for best use in the near term.

The future threats to our country are truly wicked, and they continue to evolve and challenge us. Investment in people and advanced science, in close collaboration with our closest and most reliable ally in this field—the United States—should determine the course that defence must now take.

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[Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)]

I join other Members in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart). He has unquestionably set the tone for a seriously instructive and intelligent debate, which I hope receives wider coverage than simply in here. The hon. Member for York Central (Sir Hugh Bayley) took his cue from the massive tome on the estimates, but I will take mine from the Defence Committee’s report that was introduced by my hon. Friend.

The role of NATO has been developing and is hugely important. After the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, there was no clarity about whether NATO had any role to play. It is a great tribute to it—particularly to Anders Fogh Rasmussen in recent years and Lord Robertson of Port Ellen before him—that NATO has developed an important role in stabilising other parts of the world, as well as looking after the defence of Europe. NATO did well in the way the international security assistance force operation was conducted, whatever the criticisms of the strategy, and the Secretary-General assembling a team to bring together not just NATO members but non-NATO members in the Libyan operation was a tribute to him.

The key thing that has happened is that a resurgent Russia has changed the outlook dramatically. The annexation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2008 was perhaps seen as a one off, but the annexation of Crimea last year has been a wake-up call. Paragraph 2 of the Committee’s report states:

“However, events in Crimea and Ukraine represent a “game changer” for UK defence policy. They have provoked a fundamental re-assessment of both the prioritisation of threats in the National Security Strategy and the military capabilities required by the UK. The UK's Armed Forces will need now also to focus on the defence of Europe against Russia and against asymmetric forms of warfare. This will have significant implications for resources, force structures, equipment and training.”

As others have mentioned, the new Putin doctrine is instructive. Writing in Jane’s Defence Weekly, Dr Mark Galeotti said on 11 February that Russian policy

“reflects a developing theme in Russian military art, demonstrated in Ukraine, where a combination of direct military intervention—often covert or at least ambiguous and denied—as well as the operations of proxy forces and intelligence assets have been blended with political leverage, disinformation campaigns, and economic pressure.”

[Sir Nicholas Soames]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the most dangerous aspects of all this concerns what President Putin is doing to improve greatly on the way Russian forces acted in Georgia, which was not a great success from their point of view? He is trying a whole lot of new tactics, forces, weapons and structures in a wholly or partially deniable way.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

My right hon. Friend is right, and it is significant how Russia has behaved, particularly with the annexation of Crimea. I remind hon. Members that I questioned the Foreign Secretary before Russia invaded to see whether he had heard any indication from Lavrov that it had no intention of using military force, but four days later, as my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border said, it did.

Recently, a whole raft of people have been drawing attention to what is going on. The Defence Secretary spoke of Russia as a “real and present” threat, and the Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Sir Adrian Bradshaw, also warned us and said there was a danger that Vladimir Putin would try to use his armies to invade and seize NATO territory, calculating that the alliance will be too afraid of escalating violence to respond. Sir John Sawers, former head of MI6, has said that Russia poses a state-on-state threat. He also suggested that we must have dialogue with Russia. I find that idea attractive, but I do not see how we can possibly have dialogue with a man who is intent on redrawing the map of Europe.

It is not just in Europe that we face severe challenges. As my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson) said, we face a multiplicity of threats. We can all see what is happening in the middle east. Syria is on fire and the Arab spring has left turmoil in north Africa. Now ISIL is running rampant in Iraq—thank goodness we have intervened there to check its advance, because if Iraq and all its oil revenues had fallen to it, that would have been hugely damaging to the whole world, not just the middle east.

Iran is still declaring its ambition to achieve nuclear weapons. That matter is still unresolved. We know North Korea’s filthy weapons are available to anybody who wants to pay good money to buy them. China is ramping up its military activities. I do not know how many right hon. and hon. Members have seen what is going on in the South China sea. I refer again to Jane’s Defence Weekly—this is not a particular plug for it—which has been running a hugely instructive series of articles on what China is doing in the South China sea: creating runways and port facilities on a whole raft of disputed uninhabited islands. The most significant land building in the Spratly Islands is on Fiery Cross Reef. It is shaping up to be the site for China’s first airstrip in the Spratly Islands. James Hardy, the Asia Pacific editor, writes that the area

“was previously under water; the only habitable area was a concrete platform built and maintained by China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy…The new island”—

first seen in November 2014—

“is more than 3,000 metres long and between 200 and 300 metres wide: large enough to construct a runway and apron.”

We can see what China is up to. The United States recognises that. The former US Defence Secretary Hagel said that Beijing is taking

“destabilising, unilateral actions asserting its claims in the South China sea.”

He warned that the United States would

“not look the other way when fundamental principles of the international order are being challenged”,

although I do not see any evidence that the United States is doing that.

I have referred to the criticisms that have been made at home. Criticisms are now coming from the United States, on which we find ourselves heavily dependent. We heard General Odierno today repeat not so much criticisms but the warnings he gave two years ago about the capacity of the United Kingdom to deploy alongside the United States. We should take these warnings seriously. The President of the United States has written to our own Prime Minister to express concern. This is our closest ally. We stand shoulder to shoulder. We have beliefs that are completely in common. We share intelligence. We understand all these things. We share nuclear deterrents. We believe in all those things, yet our ally is saying, “Hold on, I am concerned.” When I went to Washington in November, the discussions I had there really did rock me. Americans were saying, “Britain is now just regarded as another European country.” That is fundamentally damaging to the United Kingdom. It is not a matter for defence buffs; it is a matter for the whole nation if we are seen to be diminished, which I believe we are.

The state of our armed forces has been mentioned. This is a very serious matter. The Army is going to be cut from 110,000 to 82,000 regulars. I know we are going to have 30,000 reservists, but that is not the same thing. The Navy has been cut by 5,000, and the Royal Air Force cut similarly. We are down to 19 frigates and destroyers, when in 2001 we had 33. In 1990, we had 33 fast jet squadrons. We are now down to seven.

We face a very serious state of affairs. It is true we are committed to deterrent, and that, as far as we can understand, the Opposition are too. We are investing in cyber. My hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border is absolutely right about that. As I mentioned to him, cyber attack is an important dimension. We have to advertise, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr Hammond) the former Secretary of State for Defence made clear. We need to carry a big stick, as a number of hon. Members have said. Part of that big stick is our 2% minimum commitment to maintain our credibility with NATO. For if we do not, we will appear to be weak.