NATO

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Flight, and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, on their excellent maiden speeches. I also congratulate my noble friend Lord Addington on securing this important debate. I was particularly pleased that he mentioned the Cold War. I suppose for many of my generation the period of their childhood through to middle age was dominated by that non-conflict. Today, I hear politicians say that we live in dangerous times and that we face some of the biggest and most dangerous challenges that there have been in the world for a long time, but I reject that. Are people's memories so short that we do not remember that we lived through several decades when we woke up in the morning and were not sure that the world would exist in four minutes' time, let alone by the time the sun rose again the next day? That has perhaps been the success of NATO, an organisation which I think, as many noble Lords have said, is vital to the western world and to the defence of this country, but one where the needs have now started to change.

I want to address two areas. One is EU-NATO relations and the other is the UK-French defence treaties. It is in the area of EU-NATO that some of the important challenges for NATO lie. Returning to the speech of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, if NATO is to be relevant to some of its European nations, it is important that we resolve the EU-NATO relationship.

Of course, not everything there is negative, although there are many challenges. The European Union agreed its Petersberg tasks. Although that was not in agreement with NATO, it defined the two roles: the EU was to take charge of humanitarian issues, peacekeeping and, in some circumstances, peacemaking; but it was clear that territorial protection was for NATO.

In 2003, we had the Berlin Plus agreement, where areas were agreed between NATO and the EU—where the EU could operate and under what conditions. One of those operations is still going on in Bosnia, Operation Althea, which works very well in information sharing and all the areas covered by the Berlin Plus agreement. As I hear so often, since I have the privilege to chair this House’s EU Sub-Committee on foreign affairs and defence, there are a number of areas in which it does not work, which has specific important consequences.

One of those, although it has not been not fundamental, is where the EU has operated with India in Operation Atalanta, where there has been a great deal of co-operation between NATO fleets, the EU Operation Atalanta, the Indians, the Chinese and other maritime nations that have worked together in counterpiracy. During that operation, certainly in its early stages, there were significant limits on the information and intelligence that was swapped between those organisations. The outcome is that there was a less efficient use of important military assets, which are scarce when they are being used elsewhere in the world.

A recent inquiry into the European police operation in Afghanistan found that, again, we have a lack of formal agreement between NATO and the European Union. We heard evidence from Brussels that, in extremis, that would threaten the protection of EU citizens, including United Kingdom citizens, serving in that European police operation. That is unacceptable and needs to be solved. That has been going on for many years, and the difficulty, as we all know, concerns relations between Turkey, Greece and Cyprus. Although the technical reason is the fact that Malta and Cyprus are not members of NATO, as EU members, that is used as a means by which not to reach agreement.

I strongly believe that the lack of agreement to work between those organisations has a negative effect externally, outside Europe and the North Atlantic, and stops what could be a very effective operation between them, particularly when there is a combination of state building—civilian operations for which the EU is strong and useful—and military applications, which should be fulfilled by NATO. Where are the Government in terms of this complex problem which still needs to be solved? A solution has taken some time. Should we start approaching this more robustly with our partners instead of maintaining the softly-softly approach which seems not to have worked? Of the 27 members of the European Union, 21 are members of NATO.

I have been privileged to be involved in the Anglo-French treaties from a parliamentary point of view. The French Government more or less insisted on a parliamentary dimension to these treaties so, from your Lordships’ House, the noble Lord, Lord Sewel, and I have been involved in the process with Members from the other place, including the right honourable James Arbuthnot and other members of the Defence Committee there. I very much welcome these treaties, which France’s return to the operational side of NATO makes possible. They also enable us to extend in very practical ways the co-operation and collective security that we have in NATO to that bilateral relationship.

As my noble friend Lord Lee pointed out, France and the United Kingdom provide 50 per cent of total EU defence expenditure, slightly more than that in assets and, I think, up to 75 per cent of the total in terms of research. When the Secretary of State, Dr Liam Fox, came before our committee last week we were very concerned that the British Government perhaps wanted to make this agreement for financial reasons, and we wanted to know whether it would be sustainable. He convinced us that this treaty is intended for the long term and that it will be effective. The strategy of building confidence through a small number of measures—rather than through what the French ambassador described as “hyperbolic” means of co-operation—is exactly the right way to build that relationship. This year we will have Flanders II, Southern Mistral and a maritime operation as well. I congratulate the Government on that agreement. It is not a substitute for a European common security and defence policy, but it adds to it. I very much hope that it will be a stimulus to ensuring that other European nations pull their weight more than they do at present.

I was in Japan last year when there was an incident between a Chinese fishing vessel and the Japanese coast guard. It caused a furore, which I do not think we understand here, within the populace of both Japan and China. That was of course followed by the incident of North Korea shelling a South Korean island. In defence, the United States has inevitably turned its face towards the Pacific, where it sees an increased defence need. This trend has been short term but I believe that it will also be a longer-term one that we in Europe need to be aware of in keeping the United States involved here. Ironically, Russia too will have increasingly to look west, because in the east—in sparse and open Siberia, which, in the very long term, it will find difficult to defend—it will see other powers as a growing threat.