Arms to Syria

Debate between Malcolm Rifkind and John Baron

Thursday 11th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Baron]

I take on board my hon. Friend’s points. With law—international law in particular—one can find lawyers to substantiate both sides of an argument. I therefore tend not to focus too much on international law, although I have a sneaking feeling that we will return to the subject later on.

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)]

Quite right too!

[Mr Baron]

I hear what my right hon. and learned Friend says. That is why I think it is important that we focus on the practical and moral implications of such a policy.

In answer to colleagues’ points about doing nothing, I think that history provides a guide to what we should do. The last decade would suggest that trying to promote democracy and human rights, which is the Government’s stated objective, by force of arms can often be counter-productive. If we look at north Africa and parts of the middle east, we see the seeds of democracy stuttering into life where we have committed relatively few resources. If we look at Iraq and Afghanistan, however, it is not such a rosy picture, despite the huge cost in lives and treasure.

If we wanted to go back further, we could look at our interventions since the second world war. They have had a tendency to have an embedding effect—to reinforce the existing regimes. It is no coincidence, I put it to the House, that communism has survived longest in those countries where the west actually intervened—Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, even China. We have to be careful about our interventions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, but I do not think that a no-fly zone is practical. It could not be legitimised by the Security Council and would involve massive attacks on Syrian air defences, which would essentially mean Britain, America and other countries going to war. That would not be appropriate or justified.

On a humanitarian basis, quite apart from any other argument, the Syrian opposition deserve weapons to protect their own communities. This time next year, 200,000 men, women and children will have been slaughtered in Homs, Aleppo and the various other centres that the Assad regime is trying to recontrol. From that point of view, such an approach is a consideration.

My second point goes straight to the comments made by the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick). I hope that we are all agreed that a political solution will ultimately end the conflict, but to have a political solution requires getting people to Geneva who are willing to make the compromises required. On what possible basis should Assad contemplate such an approach when he has refused all along to contemplate not just his own demise but any transitional Government or any new Government involving the Syrian opposition? He has ruled that out entirely. At this moment, he is even less likely to be interested in that argument.

The hon. Gentleman talked about escalating new arms supplies from Russia or Iran, but the one thing the Syrian Government and Assad regime do not need is more arms. They are satiated with arms and they have been supplied with them for the past two years. Assad knows that supply from Russia and Iran will continue for as long as he needs them, but on top of that he has Hezbollah militia fighting with his forces. That is foreign intervention and, incidentally, it shows the weakness of the Assad regime that it could not recapture the small town of Qusair by itself a few weeks ago but had to get several thousand Lebanese Hezbollah militia—

[Mr Baron]

Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

I have given way twice already, I am afraid—[Interruption.] But as it is my hon. Friend, I will give way.

[Mr Baron]

I appreciate the fact that my right hon. and learned Friend is being so accommodating and I shall keep my question short. Can he answer the practical question that the Government have so far been unable to answer? How does one track and trace the weapons going to the rebel cause to stop them falling into the wrong hands? Up to this moment, that answer has not been supplied.

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

Let me go straight to that point. It is perfectly fair, but I do not think it is as convincing as my hon. Friend clearly believes. First, if we provide the weapons that the Syrian moderate secular opposition want and of which they are desperately short—they are the only people who do not have such weapons as the jihadi nationalist extremists and the Assad regime already have them—on what common- sense grounds should we anticipate that to any significant degree, the Free Syrian Army, for the first time given proper means of defending themselves and advancing their cause, should wish to hand them over to the jihadi nationalists who already have them and are their sworn enemies? Jabhat al-Nusra is not even part of the Syrian National Coalition. Of course, we cannot exclude the possibility that the odd weapon might go in that direction, but to rule out providing them on those grounds alone seems unwise and unreasonable.

The broader point is that if Assad knows that he not only has Hezbollah forces fighting for him, which he needs to advance on Homs and Aleppo, but has been promised Iranian revolutionary guards and if he has the weapons, what possible reason would he have to be prepared to reach a compromise that involves his sharing power, never mind giving it up? When hon. Members who take a different point of view say that we must have a diplomatic solution, I agree. When they say that lots of things can be done on humanitarian grounds and through diplomatic initiatives, I utterly agree. They know as well as I do, however, that in the middle of a civil war, diplomacy by itself will not deliver the results required. Why should it? That happens only when both sides to a civil war realise that they cannot get military victory by themselves and therefore must compromise.

At this moment in the conflict, the Assad regime has no reason to come to such a view. It is not short of weapons and it is not short of fighters from other countries—Lebanon and Iran—so such an approach will not succeed. By all means, let us say that this is not our war and that it is all terribly tragic. By all means, let us accept that events will go on as they have been, but hon. Members must not kid themselves that anything that relies on diplomatic initiatives alone, without the real pressure that strengthening the secular opposition would provide, has even the remotest prospect of bringing peace and preventing the continuing slaughter of tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of innocent Syrian men, women and children over the months and years to come.

Iran

Debate between Malcolm Rifkind and John Baron

Monday 20th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

I do not want to accept too many interventions, for the reasons you have mentioned, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Thirdly, the use of force will never be a desirable response, but it might be the least bad one if all else fails. In considering that, let me put to the House what I think is a very important point. Many commentators have drawn attention to all the downsides of a military response. They suggest that an attack by the United States—let us concentrate on the United States at the moment—would lead to a hike in the oil price, which is correct. They suggest that it might lead to increased terrorist support by Iran for Hezbollah or Hamas and to attempts to block the strait of Hormuz and all that that would entail, and they are right. There are various other downsides, too. But, when we think about it, we find that almost all the examples—the correct examples that have been given—of the adverse consequences of a military strike by the United States are relatively temporary. They are short to medium-term: they might last a few days, weeks or possibly even months, but they would gradually cease to have any impact.

The alternative, however, of an Iran with nuclear weapons capability is not temporary; it is permanent. Therefore, we have to come to—we cannot avoid coming to—a judgment. If diplomacy fails, if negotiations go nowhere and if sanctions do not deliver, we will at some stage still have to come to an honest judgment: whether the downside, which I do not deny exists, nevertheless has to be borne if the long-term objective is either to destroy or seriously to degrade Iran’s nuclear capability.

That brings us to a crucial question: would such action in fact do so? Do the Americans have the capability? That is ultimately a military question, and we are not privy to the military advice that the President may be receiving. If the advice is, “No, it wouldn’t,” it is not worth considering the option, but, if the advice is that we could either destroy or seriously degrade Iranian nuclear capability so that it is pushed back five or 10 years, that is a different argument.

[Mr Baron]

I am listening very carefully to my right hon. and learned Friend, but does he not accept that even the US Defence Secretary admits that a successful military strike would only delay the programme for about a year—those are his words, not mine—and that what my right hon. and learned Friend ignores is the possibility that a strike could actually do much worse and inflame a regional war?

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

Panetta was probably referring to the consequences of an Israeli attempt to damage Iranian nuclear capability which, because the Israelis do not have cruise missiles or bunker-busting bombs, would clearly have a much more limiting effect, even if it had some limited success.

In the interests of time, I shall share my final point with the House. Sometimes the inference of those who argue against even the option of a military response is that the world would be a much more peaceful, happy and gentle place if only we renounced the use of force, even as an option, in resolving this dispute. I say to my hon. Friend, however, that we have to contemplate— for a very brief moment, Mr Deputy Speaker—the consequences of Iran becoming a nuclear weapon state. There is not just the one response, to which my hon. Friend referred—whereby the Saudis themselves, pretty certainly, feel obliged to become a nuclear weapon state, Egypt and Turkey perhaps follow them and, therefore, the middle east, which is already the most dangerous part of the world, becomes incredibly volatile for all the perfectly obvious reasons that I do not have to go into. The only alternative, which my hon. Friend touched on, is that in order to discourage any Saudi, Egyptian or Turkish response of going nuclear the United States would have to give a nuclear umbrella guarantee to the Arab and Gulf states of the region, just as it has to NATO members, to Japan and to South Korea. In each case, when the United States gives such a guarantee, however, the guarantee is not credible unless the United States has bases in the area, as it has had in western Europe and has in the far east.

My hon. Friend’s view leads to the point that, if Iran became a nuclear weapon state, to have any prospect of discouraging the Saudis and others from becoming nuclear powers themselves, we would have to envisage not just for a few weeks, a few months or the odd year or so, but for the indefinite future, the middle east as a region where the United States, far from disengaging, became more committed and involved than it ever has—committed by guarantee not just to go to war, but if necessary to use its nuclear weapons in the defence of what would then be its allies, in the sense that NATO is an alliance, alongside the need for bases in the region, with all the inflammatory consequences of American troops in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf on a permanent basis.

The stakes are very high, and my hon. Friend cannot just sleep quietly, saying, “I don’t think we should have the military option, and everything would be peaceful if only people accepted the judgment that I have come to.” It has to be an option. We must hope that it never comes to that, but it cannot be ruled out at this stage. It is no one’s interests that it should, and therefore I commend the amendment to the House.

National Referendum on the European Union

Debate between Malcolm Rifkind and John Baron

Monday 24th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

No, I am sorry, that is not the case because present Conservative policy is about sharing sovereignty in certain areas where it is overwhelmingly in our national interest. When we consider what the real options are, the real debate is not whether we should be in Europe or out of Europe, but what kind of European Union we are prepared to be members of.

The assumption of this debate and many other debates is that one side or the other will win. We will either have an even closer union or the European Union will ultimately implode. That might be what will happen if the European Union does not use its own common sense and look to see whether there is a third route.

[Mr Baron]

Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

Not at this moment, if my hon. Friend will allow me.

There is a third route and we are already partly along that way—that is, an à la carte Europe, where each member state decides what degree of integration it is prepared to accept in view of its own national history, rather like France being a semi-detached member of NATO for 30 years because it believed it to be in the French interest, and NATO did not collapse as a consequence.

I say that we are already part of the way there, because at present, of the 27 member states, only 17 are members of the eurozone. Ten states are not, some because they do not want to be, and some because they could not join even if they wanted to. We are not part of Schengen, nor are the Irish. The neutral countries such as Austria, Ireland, Sweden and Finland have never been fully involved in defence co-operation because of their neutrality.

The problem at present is not that there is not an element of à la carte, but that there is a fiction in the European Union that that is purely temporary—that it is a transition and that we are all going to the same destination and the debate is merely about how long it will take us to get there. No, that is not the case. What we need is a European Union that respects the rights both of those who have a legitimate desire, in terms of their own national interest, for closer integration, and of those of us who do not choose to go that way. That has to be argued and negotiated, sometimes on the basis of considerable acrimony.

Afghanistan and Pakistan

Debate between Malcolm Rifkind and John Baron

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

For other reasons, the right hon. Gentleman might be right, but we are not going to get bogged down because there will be a withdrawal of NATO forces. The Russians have said publicly, through the Foreign Minister, that a premature NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan would be a disaster, so they are obviously concerned about the power vacuum that could result.

I believe that the real concern—this goes back to the struggles that there have been over Afghanistan for 150 to 200 years—is about Afghanistan’s future status. Of course the Russians and the Chinese will not wish to see Afghanistan as some American client state—why should they?—but there is no need for that to happen. It should not happen, and it must not be allowed to happen. Equally, Afghanistan will not be strong enough to defend itself without maximum international regional support from its neighbours—not just Russia and China, but India, Pakistan and Iran, all of which have an interest in the situation, and all of which could live with a truly neutral Afghanistan that was not the client state of any of the big powers.

We must not see the withdrawal of combat forces as the end of international military involvement. I hope that it will be, but there has to be a fall-back position if a terrorist threat re-emerges. The real solution is a combination of a treaty arrangement with the Afghan Government combined with an international status for Afghanistan, which the Afghan Government would welcome; they have already said that they would be interested in and attracted by such a proposal. That would give the kind of political and military security that ought to give confidence.

[Mr Baron]

Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the best way of achieving progress in talks with the Taliban is to make those talks unconditional?

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

I do not have any privileged information, but I am pretty certain that they already are. Whatever the formal public position, there is no doubt that talks are going on and that Americans have been involved in discussions with the Taliban. I bet that they were not simply discussing what the agenda would be or what preconditions would apply. It is a slow steady process, and I am sure that it has begun. It should have begun some time ago, and I hope that it leads to progress, but we cannot assume that it will do so. Even with the best will on our part, there is no certainty that the Taliban will wish to co-operate. They may think that they can win without such an agreement, so we have to have a structure in place, both internationally and among western countries, that takes into account all the possibilities, including the Taliban not being willing to co-operate.