EU Foreign and Security Strategy (EUC Report)

Lord Soley Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My Lords, not for the first time, I find myself hoping that the committee report chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, receives wide circulation, because it deserves detailed reading.

I want to focus my brief comments today on Russia and the EU, as a number of other Members have—to some extent, my comments will follow those made by the noble Earl, Lord Oxford and Asquith. It is a crucial relationship. It is very easy in view of current headlines and fears of terrorism to see the Middle East and Libya as the real danger spots. They are, they will remain so for a while and are a big challenge for the European Union, but if I was asked to identify a threat to the longer-term peace of Europe, I would look at the relationship between Russia and the European Union.

I do not think that President Putin wants the old Soviet Union back again—a number of things that he has said reinforce my view—but he has a clear view about spheres of interest which we no longer share. We in the western world do not follow the spheres-of-influence argument in the way that we used to, but Russia does. It is also important to remember at this time that, much as we are rightly concerned about President Putin and his Government, President Putin is not the Russian people. The Russian people are in a way much more divided than we realise. I make a lot of use of Russia Today—RT, as it is called. It is a very effective propaganda channel—in fact, the letters RT are what it is headlined as; it does not have the word Russia anywhere in it. If you know the background, you will realise that it is a sophisticated propaganda operation, but you would not recognise that unless you knew it, which I think is one reason why it is very successful at communicating with people worldwide. It has a very large following and has been running for only a few years, so we should not underestimate it.

As I have said previously in this House, we must recognise Russian history: an appalling 20th century, two world wars, millions dead, famines under a particularly brutal dictatorship with many more millions dead and then ending in the catastrophic collapse of the Soviet Union, bringing Russia a feeling of loss and disrespect—as one other Member recently recognised. We have to deal with that now. I hope that President Putin is the bridge that the Russian people need to walk over to travel from the old Stalinist/communist system to a more democratic-rule-of-law approach, but I may be being overly optimistic

I was struck and slightly worried by paragraph 140, I think, where the committee quotes General Sir Richard Sherriff, who raised the concern—it was just a thought—that British and German troops would not necessarily fight for the freedom of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. If he thought that, people in the Kremlin will have thought it too. As the Minister will know, I have expressed concern over a number of years that we often misread President Putin and underestimate his skill at manipulating situations to his advantage. He has got a frozen conflict in the Ukraine and we cannot rule out the possibility that there will be frozen conflicts in other countries of the former Soviet Union where there is a large Russian population. That is why I have concern about the peace prospects between the European Union and Russia.

I thought the most hopeful sign since the report is the reference made by the Foreign Affairs Committee to the report of Federica Mogherini, the high representative, on how we deal with Russia. In that report I felt we might be moving from a position where we impose sanctions. We had to impose sanctions—there was no other sensible alternative, frankly—but the report makes it clear, and I agree, that sanctions cannot be a strategy. They must be short term—which might mean many years—but you do not talk about getting rid of them. You talk about an exchange mechanism in any negotiation with Russia.

There was discussion in the report about the Helsinki accord. There have been signals from the Russians that if we move on the accord and into discussions with them, some progress may be made. However, in my view, for what it is worth, we should not lift sanctions without clear moves by President Putin, particularly on the Ukraine and his activities in east Europe. That is important.

On the five recommendations listed by Federica Mogherini and endorsed by the Foreign Affairs Council, recommendation V concerns the need to engage in people-to-people contact and to support Russian civil society. As I have suggested already, the Russian people are not President Putin. They are much more divergent in their views and many of them feel a strong identity with Europe. Many, particularly the younger professional people linked into the global network of communications, are more inclined to identify with west European attitudes and values. We should encourage that.

I wrote to Federica Mogherini recently saying that I hoped that recommendation V would ride up the agenda. Although we have to have a strong response to the Ukraine through sanctions and the military exercises that are rightly being conducted in Poland at the moment, at the same time we have to reach out to Russian society. We should not underestimate the possibilities there.

There are number of areas where Russia needs our contribution and co-operation. For example, I was recently on a committee on the Arctic and there is clear evidence that the Russians do not want a military confrontation there. Also, there is clear evidence that Russian science on Arctic matters generally is very good and that it is anxious to work with us. There are areas in science and education where we might be able to do more in exchanges which help the people of Russia to understand that we are not against Russia but against certain policies of its current Government. Given that that is recognised on some Russian websites which seek a link to us, we ought to be upfront in trying to work with them. I hope that through the European Union we can put some resources into recommendation V of the high representative into creating a greater form of dialogue. It is not as if things have not been happening because they have, and a number of operations are in place already. However, we could do much more. One thing I would have liked to see in the report is a couple of paragraphs looking at what more we could do in addition to what is already being done.

I know that the current Russian Government would not necessarily encourage it, but if we could start having more exchanges of Russian people that would be immensely valuable in building up person-to-person links, as suggested by the high representative. It would underpin a more peaceful process. If we do not have a more sophisticated strategy, sooner or later the sanctions issue will fail and Russia will maintain the frozen conflict in Ukraine, which it might then move on into other areas. If Russia did that, I would be deeply worried. That is why it is so important that the European Union should push this right to the top of its foreign policy objectives.