Foreign Affairs and Defence

Malcolm Rifkind Excerpts

Wednesday 26th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I am merely saying that there are a range of issues for the Government to address. I explained earlier how our concentration in our collective discussions on international affairs has been very much on Afghanistan. The three meetings of the National Security Council that we have had so far have concentrated overwhelmingly on Afghanistan. We have not yet determined the exact action that we will take on universal jurisdiction. However, that is after two weeks in office. As I said, the former Government had a good deal longer to try to deal with these things.

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)]

Although most of the comment so far has concerned Tzipi Livni and visitors from Israel, the Foreign Secretary knows as well as I do that these powers could be used against any visitor from many other countries around the world, including the United States. If there are any difficulties in reaching an early decision, I hope that those who are cautious about making such a change will bear in mind that this is not simply about Israel but about the United Kingdom being able to welcome visitors from many countries and not being prevented from doing so by some technical aberration.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)]

I welcome the right hon. Member for South Shields (David Miliband) to the club of former Foreign Secretaries. May I pay tribute to the work he did as Foreign Secretary? He served his country well during his period in office. It is clear that he now has his mind on other matters—indeed, he indirectly referred to it in his speech. The country will face the unusual situation of two brothers vying for the highest position in their party. I must tell him that the precedents are not encouraging. I am thinking not so much of Cain and Abel, because so far as we know, the two brothers in this contest are very amiable towards each other, but of Moses and Aaron. The right hon. Gentleman will recall that sadly, Moses never reached the promised land. That was left to Aaron, who turned out to be his younger brother. We must wait and see what the future holds.

I also congratulate my right hon. Friends the new Foreign Secretary and Secretary of State for Defence. I have been privileged to have been involved with both Departments and—as my right hon. Friends will already know—they are two marvellous Departments to look after, each unique in its own way. The special role of the diplomatic service is different from that found in any other Department, and the armed forces clearly have their own role.

I was sad that the right hon. Member for South Shields made a rather snide remark about the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (Mr Bellingham). He was my Parliamentary Private Secretary, is well known in the Foreign Office and was an entirely suitable appointment. He will serve it extremely well.

I was especially pleased that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said—and the Prime Minister has agreed—that the new Government do not wish to preside over strategic shrinkage, because they wish to maintain Britain’s role in the world at its previous level. That is important at a time when both the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence will face the serious prospect of heavy cuts. I make one particular point to my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary. Although he will have to absorb his share of the cuts, I hope that he will not be tempted or persuaded to allow any embassies or high commissions to be closed. That has been the temptation in the past, but the damage that it does is disproportionate to the relatively minor savings achieved. Closing the high commission or embassy in Vanuatu, Costa Rica or Niger may sound as if it would only upset those countries, but in fact the whole region—be it Africa, Asia or the Pacific—would interpret it as a sign of growing disinterest on the part of the United Kingdom.

The closure of such embassies or high commissions by a Conservative Government might have another ironic consequence, because it would create a vacuum, that I predict would be filled by the new External Action Service of the European Union. British interests would have to be represented somehow, and it would be ironic if our withdrawal led to the European Union having to fill the gap. I hope that the Government will not succumb to that temptation.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman share my concern at the large number of embassies and missions that have been closed in Latin America and the growing centralisation of diplomatic representation in Mexico and one or two other places, which is seen as offensive in many of the smaller countries in that region?

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

Yes. I recognise, of course, that at this moment we can keep only a modest high commission or embassy in some places, but a micro-embassy is better than none at all, because it can be built on when the financial situation eases.

I turn now to the wider question of the foreign policy that has been pursued over the last 13 years. It has been an extraordinary period. It is often forgotten that we have been virtually continuously at war for most of that time—in Kosovo, in Iraq and then in Afghanistan. There has never been such a period of uninterrupted military action. Some of these wars have been wars of choice, and some have been wars of necessity. Kosovo and Iraq were wars of choice. We had not been attacked, nor had any of our allies, but in both cases the Government of the day—led at the time by Tony Blair—concluded that there was some reason to initiate those wars in the name of liberal interventionism. Afghanistan is different. Although there may be equal concern and nervousness about the outcome, Afghanistan has been, and continues to be, a war of necessity, because it originated with the al-Qaeda attack on the United States, and it is important to recognise what flows from that.

A war of choice is different to a war of necessity. With the Falklands war and the first Gulf war—provoked by the invasion of Kuwait—winning the war was relatively straightforward. Conventional forces were used to expel the Argentines from the Falklands and the Iraqis from Kuwait, the wars were over and the mission accomplished. However, when a decision must be made to initiate a conflict that is not simply the expulsion of an enemy from a given bit of territory, but rather to eliminate a future threat, the situation—as in Afghanistan—is much more complex and cannot be addressed in traditional terms.

The problem has been increased by the tendency in the early years of the Afghan situation for the Government to try to win public support for what they were doing by talking of the need to eliminate poverty and corruption, to build democracy and to achieve equality for women in Afghanistan. Those are all worthy objectives, but they have very little to do with the reason we were there in the first place. We all know that the elimination of corruption, the improvement of women’s rights and the growth of democracy will take a generation, but by putting them on an equal footing with the need to eliminate the threat from terrorism, we were bound to give the impression that because those objectives had not been achieved within four or five years we had failed in our strategic endeavour.

The reality is that the primary aim of our presence in Afghanistan has already been achieved. We have eliminated al-Qaeda as a credible force within Afghanistan. They are now in their caves on the border, struggling to survive, although I do not claim that they do not represent a threat in other parts of the world. However, their ability to use the sovereign state of Afghanistan to plan and launch attacks around the world has been eliminated and the objective now is to ensure that that is irreversible. However, that requires a political as well as a military solution, as others have said. It requires the ability to create a Government in Afghanistan who, more than Mr Karzai does at present, represent the overall spectrum of Afghan opinion. The UK has had to contemplate a coalition to deal with our national problems, so it is not too much to expect Afghanistan also to see the need for movement in that direction.

I shall suggest the ingredients required over the next few months—even the next two or three years—to make the progress we wish to achieve in Afghanistan. First, we need to support the surge that is taking place at the moment. The decision by President Obama to increase troop numbers was correct, and the way in which the NATO forces are operating sends a message to the Taliban that we do not simply intend to try to end our presence in Afghanistan as quickly as possible regardless of the consequences. Secondly, we need a major effort to develop links and contacts with those in the Taliban who are not committed to al-Qaeda and who have more interest in Afghanistan than in international terrorism. Many of them come from the Pashtun section of the population, which is 40% of the total, so they need to be part of the new Afghanistan whenever possible.

Thirdly, we need to insist on Afghanistan and Pakistan improving their relationship with each other. It is not often realised that the hostile relationship between those two countries goes back to 1949. The Durand line—the border between the two countries—has never been recognised by Afghanistan, and the assistance that elements in the Pakistani Government have given to the Taliban has been significantly influenced by their fear of Pashtun nationalism and the belief that elements in Afghanistan have not reconciled themselves to the existing border. If Afghanistan, under President Karzai or whomever, wishes to have our full and unqualified support, the least that we should expect from it is a greater effort to ensure a cordial relationship with Pakistan. Unless those two countries work together, not just in name but in substance, the prospects of achieving peace look difficult indeed.

Fourthly, by all means let us have economic and social development in Afghanistan, but let us emphasise that as a long-term strategic objective. It will take a generation and although Afghanistan rightly deserves to be one of our priorities for such expenditure, it should not be linked—for the reasons that I mentioned earlier—to the military effort, which is based on different principles.

Fifthly, we need to build more regional support. Unique to Afghanistan—and therefore very different from Iraq—is that when these matters were discussed in the Security Council of the UN, there was unanimous support for the operation that NATO is undertaking. Both Russia and China have powerful reasons for wishing us to succeed in Afghanistan, but we are not using the potential co-operation from those countries, especially China, to build the necessary support.

Finally, when we look to a future in which NATO forces can be gradually run down—when that can be done safely and wisely—we should seek to achieve a treaty relationship with the Afghan Government so that even after NATO ground forces have gone, we continue to provide air support, the services of special forces and other measures to ensure that in those parts of Afghanistan that its Government may not yet control we will be able to prevent any reappearance of the Taliban or al-Qaeda in a way that would damage our interests.

We can look forward to a more satisfactory outcome to this dilemma. I salute the Government’s intentions, and I was delighted by the early visit made to Afghanistan, which demonstrates their determination to implement a successful strategy in all our interests.