NATO

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, this has been a very expert and enjoyable debate. I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to it. In particular, I thank my noble friend Lord Addington for securing the debate and the two maiden speakers, who are fairly expert contributors themselves. I said to the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, the other day that I must once have lectured to him. I was privileged to lecture to the Royal College of Defence Studies once a year for 21 years, which makes me just about old enough to have been there when he was there in the early 1990s.

We are discussing a subject that, as the noble Lord, Lord Browne, rightly pointed out, is insufficiently debated in the national media and the national Parliament. I very much agree with everything he said about the need for a more informed debate. After all, NATO has achieved peace in Europe and tremendous success as an alliance. However, that task has been transformed since the Cold War crumbled away in 1989 and 1990. Europe is now at peace, although still with unresolved conflicts around its edges. Most of the former members of the Warsaw Pact are now members of both the EU and NATO. NATO has had to reinvent itself to serve usefully new purposes.

The Lisbon NATO summit last November approved a new strategic concept, which now needs to guide the process of NATO reform and of changing capabilities. NATO needs to reinvent itself every 10 years to remain an effective alliance that commands the full support of all its members. As the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, said, the continued effectiveness of NATO also depends on public support within the member states. The absence of strong political leadership within Europe to which he referred is thus a major threat to the continuation of the alliance.

I regret that we do not discuss defence and defence co-operation very often in either House of the British Parliament. I regret that we do not spend more time discussing these issues across national Parliaments and across national debates. All noble Lords who have been involved in discussing European security with our German partners, for example, will know that they start from a very different perspective from the British. The French are a great deal closer to us. Engaging in each other’s domestic debates is part of holding NATO together.

I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Bates, to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. We need to make sure that we plug such assemblies back into national Parliaments to ensure that it continues to have a useful function. If we do not, Defence Ministers agree and go back and Finance Ministers veto, leaving us stuck without the capabilities that we need.

I particularly welcome the emphasis of the noble Lord, Lord Lee, on the Franco-British treaty—one of the latest developments in British security policy. That is a new treaty that needs to be debated and explained, and for which we need to build public support as we carry it into practice.

I identified at least seven themes in this debate and I probably missed several more. There is the crucial link between the United States and the security of the European region, which NATO has been about since the start and in which it continues to be one of the key elements. There is the whole question of NATO command structure reform and NATO reform as a whole; the nuclear dimension; the NATO-Russia relationship; the implications of the Franco-British defence and security co-operation treaty; north Atlantic co-operation on out-of-area operations, on which several noble Lords discussed the key Afghan operation; and the development of a comprehensive approach to civil conflict.

On the question of the link with the United States, several noble Lords have said that it is true that the United States no longer sees European security as its key priority. We are, after all, blessed; Europe is now at peace. However, the link that an integrated alliance gives us to American intelligence and the American military is invaluable—it is part of what enables NATO, or at least willing members of it, to operate together in area or out of area whenever we need to. We see that in central Asia and of course in Afghanistan, and we might have to see it again in other areas.

On Afghanistan, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, will allow me to say that he raised a large number of questions that go rather wider than this debate. I pay tribute to the substantial number of British troops who have been committed to Afghanistan and will continue to be for some while yet. We feel that we are making good progress in a very difficult set of circumstances. We have learnt in Afghanistan, as from the Balkan experience, that our approach to security needs to be, as the strategic concept puts it, “comprehensive”—a mixture of civil and military capabilities. We are, we hope, learning from the awkward lessons that we are suffering in order to put those lessons into practice. That in turn means that relations between the more civilian power of the EU and the more military power of NATO become a more important part of our alliance as a whole.

On NATO reform, the NATO strategic concept commits NATO to,

“continuous reform towards a more effective, efficient and flexible Alliance”.

As noble Lords know, the Secretary-General has just made a speech at the Munich security conference in which he highlighted the need for NATO to reduce bureaucracy and slim down structures. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, referred to the bureaucratic tempo of NATO Brussels and the slow-moving—sometimes, not even moving—consensus through which we all struggle. Those of us who know the NATO headquarters, those extremely rickety temporary buildings from the 1960s, know that it is not just a question of saving money to knock them down and build an effective and smaller headquarters; it is also a matter of trying to build a more efficient apparatus that suits an entirely different set of threats from those that existed in the early 1960s when NATO first moved its headquarters from Paris to Brussels. It is not just to reduce costs. We are bringing down the number of headquarters and the number of agencies because the tasks that we face are very different.

One of the issues under consideration is whether the NATO maritime command HQ should remain at Northwood in the United Kingdom. Her Majesty’s Government strongly believe that it should on the grounds of its proven efficiency, effectiveness and low running costs; because it has the necessary infrastructure and communications to command surface and sub-surface maritime forces; and because it is the only NATO HQ that is co-located with a current EU operations HQ, as both NATO and EU counterpiracy operations are being run from the same location and interact closely. The UK has been driving resource reform, which includes the implementation of improved financial management, accountability and oversight, and we will continue to support the Secretary-General in his efforts.

The Lisbon summit set out a strategic direction in the new strategic concept. Of course, it does not command absolute agreement by all members of the alliance to every single item listed in it; we are a large alliance, operating by consensus, and, as in all forms of politics, we have to engage with each other in a constant process of persuasion to share and build common purposes. It is vital for alliances to retain this shared vision and to work together to implement it. The strategic concept and the plans to implement it are very much in line with the UK’s national security strategy and the outcome of our strategic defence and security review.

We welcome the emphasis on civil military planning and action throughout the conflict cycle and that is part of the comprehensive approach that we know we all have to develop. We look for closer EU-NATO co-operation. As the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, will know, we still stub our toes on the issue of Cyprus and Turkey, but we are managing to build still closer relations between the EU and NATO, and we see that as very much the way that we need to go. As set out in the SDSR, we believe that UK membership of the European Union is a key part of our broad security international engagement and a key means of promoting security and prosperity in the European neighbourhood. The common security interests of all EU member states, NATO members or not, are served when they use their collective weight in the world to promote their shared interests and values, including on major foreign policy security concerns.

Noble Lords asked about NATO's nuclear posture. At the moment, we are debating the whole question of the future of tactical nuclear weapons. The NATO members are rather more committed so far to drawing down the number of nuclear weapons than our Russian partners with whom we are in dialogue, but as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, will know, the question of the future of NATO’s remaining free-fall nuclear weapons is one that is currently under discussion.

I will say a little about the UK Franco-British treaty. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Lee, that it is the Franco-British treaty and not the Anglo-French treaty. The Scots have been in military co-operation with the French rather longer than the English. Indeed, when Sir William Wallace was Guardian of Scotland, he was actively engaged in pursuing Scots-French military co-operation against the English—sadly, on that occasion without success, as the plaque commemorating his execution in Westminster Hall observes.

The historic treaty signed by the UK and France last November demonstrates our commitment to work together to address the challenges facing the alliance. It recognises that great defence and security co-operation will strengthen NATO as the foundation of our collective security and reaffirms the role that the European Union plays in strengthening international security. The return of France to the heart of NATO under the leadership of President Sarkozy is of course part of the context in which this new treaty has been signed. France and the UK will work together to help shape the new NATO strategic concept. But we are also working more closely together in implementing the concept. Closer co-operation makes great sense at a point where both countries face acute pressures on our defence budgets, where our approach to the deployment of troops abroad to the management of international conflict is very close and where, therefore, there is a great deal that we can share.

I cannot give the noble Lord, Lord Lee, a direct answer on co-operation with the French on maritime surveillance, but I can promise that I will write to him. Closer co-operation will make our forces more interoperable. As the SDSR highlighted, our default position is to operate as a partner wherever we can. If that allows our forces to operate alongside each other more effectively in the future, that is an enormous advantage. There are those in both Houses and the British media who see that as a tremendous threat to British sovereignty. It is possible to overstate the sovereignty issue. In 1917-18, my father along with several hundred thousand other British troops, served under effective French command. It was not seen as a tremendous block in British sovereignty then. ISAF has been under French, Turkish, Danish and various other commands. We co-operate with others when British interests are at stake. That is the way we have to work in the world today.

We see the Franco-British treaty as a basis on which we can build and sustain other forms of co-operation with other European countries. The oldest and closest form of military co-operation that we have in Europe is the UK-Dutch marine amphibious force, now nearly 30 years old. The Ministry of Defence has just launched a Nordic initiative on military and security grounds, and we look forward to working more closely with others and helping to challenge other states to come up to scratch in their contribution to European military capabilities for the EU and NATO.

On NATO and Russia, we are working hard to develop a strong partnership focused on common interests. We face many common challenges in Afghanistan, as well as in counterterrorism, piracy and counternarcotics. We agreed at the Lisbon summit to work together and enhance our practical co-operation. That can be seen in agreement on transit routes to and from Afghanistan and in closer agreement in countering the narcotics trade that comes across central Asia into Europe. Future collaboration, particularly on missile defence, has the potential to improve NATO and Russia's security as well as our overall security relationship. We are continuing to negotiate with the Russians to modernise the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty, the CFE.

On co-operation out of area, Afghanistan has of course taken us way out of area and has helped to transform NATO. I believe that 48 states, many of them not NATO members, are contributing to the allied effort in Afghanistan. Off Somalia there are Indian and Chinese ships working with British, Dutch and German ships in the anti-piracy control and in MONUSCO in the DRC we have Indian troops as the largest contingent and a British major-general as the second in command.

NATO is reinventing itself, but we need to ensure that the people of Britain and leaders in other countries continue to be supportive of what NATO’s changing role should be. I suppose that I should admit that I have form here, as in 1990 I spoke at a conference on the future of NATO in Brussels, arguing that NATO was unlikely to exist in 2000. In 2000, I published an article in Survival entitled “What is NATO for?”, implying that it was not very easy to answer that question. One has to say here in 2011 that NATO has adapted remarkably well and has enlarged very successfully. I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, that, yes, article 5 does apply to the new members. It was an astonishing achievement to provide security across central and eastern Europe to help to transform and integrate their armed forces, to give them the stability that underpinned their transition to democracy and prosperity. Enlargement will continue. The remaining countries in the western Balkans are moving at different paces towards membership. The question of Ukraine and Georgia is a long-term one, but the Bucharest summit in 2008 said that membership remained open to them.

The new strategic concept talks about the different sort of threats that we face. If there is a cyberattack on a NATO member as there was in Estonia, it is not entirely clear who was responsible—whether it was a state—and where it came from, so the response has to be much more complex. What we need, therefore, is more complex capabilities in return. I strongly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, that the reduction in resources faces us with major challenges. NATO, however, remains central to UK security and to the security of the European region. It is a resource for all of us to call on in managing global threats.

I thank noble Lords for their contributions to this debate and hope that we will all continue to argue the case for European and Atlantic co-operation in security and argue it not only in London but in Berlin, Warsaw, Stockholm and many other capitals of Europe.