Russia’s Grand Strategy

Richard Foord Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I think that we are in denial of not just a cold war, but a hot war. The hot war that is being conducted in Ukraine is laced with rhetoric and invective about NATO being the threat and about the United States of America provoking that threat, so NATO and the United States must somehow be defeated in this war. If we do not understand that Putin is now conducting a hybrid and political war against Europe and NATO, backed by a hot war in Ukraine, we are not yet living in the real world.

If the process of reinvigorating Russia’s armed forces and preparing for a further assault on Ukraine is not derailed and Putin is successful, by 2024, the west will face a more formidable Russia that believes that it can establish its place in a future world order by force of arms. This is a long-term strategic challenge that requires a long-term strategic response from the UK Government, all European Governments and NATO.

Putin’s strategy depends on time. We all admire Ukraine’s bravery and agility, which have left the Russian army in something of a quagmire, but it would be an epic tragedy if we now allowed Russia the time to mass its forces, so that its brutal war of attrition could become overwhelming. It is crucial for the west to increase the tempo of its supply of weapons systems to Ukraine, so that Ukraine, rather than Russia, can be first to develop the mobile formations necessary to break the current battlefield deadlock. The reality is that Russia’s whole grand strategy is on a knife edge and the next few months could be crucial.

We should not be deterred by Putin’s so-called red lines. In war and crisis, red lines are political and flexible. We proved that when Russia’s build-up to the invasion last year crossed several NATO red lines, and we did nothing. Likewise, Putin’s incorporation of Donbas into the Russian Federation was intended to set up a red line of Russian territory being attacked, but when Ukraine attacked, it turned out there was no red line.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

On the point about how we in the west might have set some red lines, I thought at the time that the west was not being firm enough in the red lines it was laying down. What we saw in mid-February was the US President and others talking only about sanctions, and how there would be nothing more than sanctions as a consequence of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I regard the United States as our closest and most important ally and personally I love the United States of America, but on its response to this crisis—it has been voluminous compared with that of the rest of Europe and a lot of money has been devoted to it—its signalling has been very weak. What matters in wartime is not what red lines we set; it is what we actually do.

I am afraid our own Government made a terrible error when we set a red line about the use of chemical weapons in Syria in 2013, and then what did we do? We backed off when chemical weapons were used. The effect of that has been to weaken the influence of the United States, the United Kingdom and the whole of the west in the countries that really count in this war as potential allies or neutral states—for example, the Gulf states, which despaired of our lack of resolve in that conflict. Red lines are less important than what we do, and what we must now do is send far more matériel into this conflict to support the Ukrainians, so that the Russians are deterred or fail to achieve what they attempt to do.

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[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant), who made some powerful points. Here we are again debating Russia’s strategy. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin), who held a similar debate a year ago. It was a year ago that I and, indeed, others in the Chamber predicted that Russia would invade Ukraine. Few believed us. That reflects a poor understanding of Russia as well as of Russia’s strategy and what Russia stands for.

When we play the board game Risk, we quickly appreciate how difficult it is to defence the largest continent. It covers 11 time zones and, over millenniums, its sheer size has made it vulnerable to invasion. That has come from the Vikings, the Mongols, the Teutonic order, the Polish, the Lithuanians, the Napoleonic French and twice in one century from the Germans. Russia eventually appreciated the value of choosing a strong, central, authoritarian leader to hold its disparate principalities together, backed by the Orthodox Church, pursing a policy of expansionism. Simply put, Ivan the Terrible pushed east, Peter the Great pushed north, Catherine the Great pushed south and, of course, Stalin pushed west. That is the Russian mindset: if we are not expanding, we will be attacked.

After world war two, perhaps we thought that things might be different. It took the US diplomat George Kennan’s observations of Joseph Stalin’s re-election speech —there were no other candidates—to make Washington realise that America’s wartime ally was going back to its old ways. His “Long Telegram”, as it became known, formed the cornerstone of America’s post-war grand strategy called “containment”, which eventually won the cold war.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, we naively hoped that Russia would perhaps again join the international fold. Sixteen years later, when President Putin addressed the Munich security conference in 2007, we did not require another long telegram to interpret his clear intentions: Russia was resorting to type. The west ignored his blatant warnings and, only a year later, Putin began redrawing the map of eastern Europe, beginning with Georgia.

[Richard Foord]

I agree with the right hon. Member that Russia uses its size to bully and intimidate other countries. He may recall that, last May, Dmitry Kiselyov used his Sunday night show to talk about how Russia has the capability to

“plunge Britain to the depths of the ocean”.

With Russia’s approach of singling out the UK, does he agree that we must stand strong with our NATO allies, given that collectively we have so much more strength as 32 NATO countries?

[Mr Ellwood]

I am grateful for that intervention, which takes us back to the first speech. It is clear that we continue to be spooked by the rhetoric from Russia. It requires political will to stand up, rekindle that cold war statecraft and look our adversary in the eye, conscious of the escalatory ladder. Today, I ask: when will the penny drop?

Today’s conflict is not just about Ukraine. Our post-world war two global order was built on the pursuance of democracy, accountability, freedom and the rule of international law. That has never looked as fragile as it does today as both Russia and China have openly broken away from those objectives, not just pioneering a more authoritarian approach to governance but encouraging other countries to follow their lead.

We should finally accept that the elites in both Russia and China want to see not just America but the west weakened. So it is welcome news that we finally see some serious NATO hardware heading Ukraine’s way, with greater resolve to stand up to Russia. Once again, I welcome the UK leading in that, ever pushing the envelope of acceptable international support for Ukraine, but as I hope the debate illustrates, we continue to limit ourselves to tactics and military assistance. We do not think enough about strategy.

The conflict is not likely to end any time soon. Russia’s ability to endure hardship is far greater than ours in the west. Putin wants to drag the conflict out, so I offer this strategy to help conclude the conflict in 2023. First, let us agree the mission. The ramifications go well beyond Ukraine. Let us all agree what the mission is and what success actually looks like.

Secondly, as I have said so many times in the Chamber, let us secure UN safe haven status for the port of Odessa so that all, not just one fifth, of those vital grain ships can reach international markets and lower the cost of living everywhere. Thirdly, let us establish a major Ukrainian armaments factory in eastern Poland. Gifting kit is absolutely the right call now, but it is not sustainable in the long term, so we should let Ukraine develop its own equipment, whether it be the Leopard or anything else, in eastern Poland.

Fourthly, let us list the Russian state-sponsored Wagner militia group as a terrorist organisation. Fifthly, let us directly sanction President Putin. He is responsible for the war, so let us freeze his personal assets as well. Sixthly, as Ukraine will not be joining NATO any time soon, let us invite Ukraine to join the joint expeditionary force, which is the critical security umbrella that will help deter Russia from attempting to invade in the future.

Finally, to further leverage our leadership and support for Ukraine, let us appoint a senior UK-Ukraine envoy, answerable directly to the Prime Minister, who would help co-ordinate Whitehall support and align our efforts with those of our international allies. The first duty would be to organise a major Marshall plan conference in the spring and begin post-conflict assistance planning. Those are seven strategic objectives to help put the fire out and stand up to Russia.

I will conclude by shining a rather sad light on our own defence posture. We are heading into another cold war, more dangerous than the last, and it saddens me to say this, but we are ill-prepared militarily for the threats coming over the horizon, particularly when it comes to the British Army. Three critical components that contribute to the quantity and quality of our land warfare capability and more widely to the full spectrum of armed warfare are the tank, the armoured fighting vehicle and the recce vehicle.

Our tank, the Challenger 2, was introduced 25 years ago. Back then, we had over 900; today, we have cut our main battle tank numbers to just 148. Those will now finally gain an upgrade, but that will not be complete until 2030. Our armoured fighting vehicle, the Warrior, was introduced 30 years ago—a competent but now dated workhorse, able to carry infantry and protect them with its 30 mm Rarden cannon. All 700 are being axed and replaced by the Boxer—a wheeled, not tracked, vehicle—and we are choosing the variant that has no turret, so no serious firepower. Those will not be completely introduced until 2032. Finally, there is our recce vehicle, the Scimitar. That was introduced over 50 years ago. It should have been replaced by the Ajax three years ago, but a litany of procurement problems means that it is still unclear when that will happen.

I make it clear that as the European security picture deteriorates, all this is frankly a mess—a dog’s dinner. No wonder the head of the British Army, General Sir Patrick Sanders, broke ranks last week to say that this is all unacceptable. Our Army is now too small and it is using equipment that is already obsolete. The new integrated review must address the sad state of our land forces and their combat effectiveness. We need a bigger defence budget or we will learn the hard way how our economy is impacted by the failure to invest in and utilise our hard power.

To conclude, my message to the House today is: let us look beyond Ukraine. International storm clouds are gathering once again and on our current trajectory the world is set to splinter into two dangerously competing spheres of ideological interest. What Russia is attempting to do here is just the beginning. There is a worrying absence of international leadership—of strategy—as to how we collectively respond. This is no time for strategic ambiguity and no time for quibbling about our defence posture. Containment, once again, is required. Our actions on the international stage in the past earned us a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. Eight decades later, how the world has changed! Let us show that we deserve to keep that seat at the top table and rekindle our political will.

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[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) on securing this debate, which has the same title as the debate last January. In preparing for today, I have read what he and other Members said then. I think it is very generous to talk about a Russian “grand strategy” because I regard Russia’s leadership in the Kremlin as an opportunist outfit. Russia loves the idea of a divided west and when it sees us divided it takes full advantage, especially when it can smell western weakness, a lack of will or disinterest.

I am not going to come up with any fine words on this subject—certainly none as fine as those of a predecessor MP for Tiverton, Lord Palmerston. In 1858, he wrote:

“The policy pursued by the Russian Government has always been to push forward its encroachments as fast and as far as the apathy or want of firmness of other Governments would allow it to go, but always to stop and retire when it was met with decided resistance, and then to wait till the next favourable opportunity”.

I would like to draw on a couple of examples from the past 125 years in which we have continued to see imperial Russia or the Soviet Union taking an expansionist approach, only to be pinned back by western democracies and others. I would also say that we should avoid throwing all caution to the wind, because the root of Russia’s approach, in my view, is injured pride—not just in the Kremlin, but among most Russian people. Finally, the House should think not only about a grand strategy for the UK, but about a strategy for NATO. We need to work collaboratively with our NATO allies to ensure that the alliance is working on a strategy.

We all know that Putin’s historical essays have been entirely discredited by historians, but they are useful to us. They are a useful guide to his intent: I think he models himself on some of his predecessors from the 17th and 18th centuries. At the end of the 18th century, Catherine the Great is supposed to have said of her enormous land empire:

“I have no way to defend my borders but to extend them.”

That certainly fits in with what went on during her reign: after she came to power, the country’s westernmost border moved from east of the River Dnipro to west of Kyiv, so we can see that Putin has some stand-out role models from the time of the Tsar and the years before that.

What we have been seeing in Russia in the past 15 years is a restoration of pride following a period of imperial collapse. Of course there is no direct comparison with the UK, but if we want a sense of how Russians feel, some Conservative Members may remember how they felt in the early 1980s when there was, perhaps, a restoration of British pride after having had to manage the economy in the 1970s with the aid of a loan from the International Monetary Fund. It is that feeling that your country has been put down and is coming back—the rising of a phoenix from the flames.

Yet in the Kremlin, Russia is intimidated by the lack of attractiveness of its centralised political tradition: its post-communist neighbours are attracted by western co-operative structures. Before last year, I thought that those in the Kremlin who are responsible for Russian grand strategy knew the difference between coercion and violence—coercion might involve the threat of violence, but would stop short of using force—but we have seen that that is not true.

This debate is so useful for thinking about grand strategy partly in terms of ends: if we think of grand strategy in terms of ends, ways and means, it is useful for us to think today about the Kremlin’s intent. There have tended to be reasons why Russia has on occasion seemed willing to permit Ukraine to be independent of it. In 1918, the first world war having ended, Lenin said:

“We need both hands free”,

and permitted Ukraine to become independent. In 1991, Yeltsin had his own motive for enabling Ukraine to become free: to sideline Gorbachev as President of the Soviet Union.

But that is history. I was so encouraged to hear the NATO Secretary-General, Jens Stoltenberg, saying in December 2021 that

“that’s the kind of world we don’t want to return to, where big powers had a say, or a kind of right, to put limitations on what sovereign, independent nations can do”.

[Sir Chris Bryant]

Surely the key moment was the signing of the Budapest accord. Was there not something of a failing on the part of this country and others? It was an innocent failing, but we signed up to something that was so nebulous that it could never really be enforced, although in theory it looked as if we were guaranteeing the territorial integrity of Ukraine, in exchange for which it surrendered its nuclear weapons.

[Richard Foord]

I entirely agree. The Budapest memorandum was not worth the paper it was written on. It had no legal standing; even the word “guarantee” has different meanings in different languages, and the Ukrainians could certainly have interpreted it very differently from the British, Americans and others who drafted it.

During military conflicts in which the UK has been engaged over the last two or three decades, we have heard the claim that we have no quarrel with the people of “X”—insert Serbia or Iran—but only with its Government or, often, its dictator, but I do not think we can repeat that claim in this instance. When we look at opinion polling in Russia, it is pretty staggering to see how much popular support there is for the war in Ukraine. According to what has been said by Ukrainians I have talked to in the last couple of weeks, they regard the fact that we talk in the west about Putin or Putin’s war as successful propaganda on the part of Russia. They would much prefer us to talk about Russia in the round, and attribute responsibility much more broadly than to just one man in the Kremlin. I also think we need to avoid driving our competitors and our adversaries into Russia’s orbit; not least, we need to avoid knocking China into Russia’s open arms.

We need to think of the UK’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in terms of a NATO strategy, rather than the UK’s grand strategy alone. In that context, it is worth recalling a 19th-century musical hall song. You will be relieved to know, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I shall not attempt to sing it. Members will have heard the lyrics before:

“the rugged Russian Bear

Full bent on blood and robbery, has crawled out of his lair…

We don’t want to fight but by jingo if we do,

We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, and got the money too!”

That is an anachronism today. The UK cannot boast the ships, or the money or, certainly, the men in the Army.

Let me end with another quotation, this time from Winston Churchill. We will all have heard his famous characterisation of Russia as

“a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”,

but it is less well known that he went on to say:

“perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest. It cannot be in accordance with the interest or safety of Russia that Germany should plant itself upon the shores of the Black Sea”.

We need to bear in mind that Germany is cautious because it has good reason to be cautious, given its history. Instead of criticising our allies, we should come up with a strategy, with our allies, that sees Ukraine defend its borders and defeat Russia.