North Africa and the Middle East

Debate between Rory Stewart and Denis MacShane

Thursday 17th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

This debate is, of course, an extraordinary phenomenon. We have been stuck in intervention for the past 20 years. We have spent $3 trillion, we have had 100,000 lives lost and we have had more than 1 million soldiers pass through Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, yet we do not seem to have a clear answer on what we do in Libya. The lessons that we are taking from history are very dubious. People are referring to Bosnia, but they are forgetting that Bosnia was a sovereign, independent state when it asked for assistance—the entire debate in the Security Council was completely different. We fail also to understand ourselves. As hon. Members from all parts of the House have mentioned, we fail to understand our own tendency to be unable to do something with passionate moderation. We shift quickly from dipping our toe in the water to being submerged up to our neck—we go from a no-fly zone into a troop deployment.

The final thing that we misunderstand—this is the reason why we need to lift our eyes from Libya—is the way in which we are increasingly perceived in the middle east after our interactions with Iraq and Afghanistan. If we were discussing this immediately after the events in Kosovo, the whole debate would be completely different. If those events had just happened, we would be able to stand up and say, “We don’t care that the Russians are blocking us in the Security Council. We have done a good job in Kosovo and we are going to do the same thing in Libya.” But the intervening 10 years have made that option impossible, which is why the Government’s position is the correct one.

If I understand it correctly, the Government’s position is to push strongly for a no-fly zone, but a no-fly zone only with strong international backing. Many people on both sides of the House have suggested that that is a paradox and that it is somehow impossible. They say, “Either you push for a no-fly zone or you don’t. Your rhetoric has to be matched with your action. If you think you have a humanitarian right and an obligation, you should do it regardless of the international politics.” That no longer makes sense. It is perfectly consistent to say that we have a moral right and a moral duty to impose a no-fly zone but will not do so without the support of the United Nations. One of the most important things to remember in that context is not Russia but Brazil, India and South Africa—the emerging powers who are not, at the moment, on our side. If we try to lurch into this thing without bringing with us what will probably be the majority of the countries in the world, it will be extremely unwise and very dangerous. Does that mean that we should do nothing? No. It means that we need to lift our eyes above Libya. We need to see the incredible potential in this region, if we are patient, over the next 20 to 30 years.

We tend, I think, to get caught up in exactly what happens when a helicopter lands near Benghazi, rather than keeping our eyes on Egypt and Tunisia and on what the middle east and north Africa mean to us. They mean so much to us. It is not just that they are on the other side of the Mediterranean. It is not just that they have this incredible young, unemployed population who are both a potential source of prosperity for their own nations and for us and a potential threat to us. We also have much greater leverage on those countries than on the nations that are much further away, such as Afghanistan.

The relationships between France and Morocco and between Italy and Libya—indeed, around the whole Mediterranean littoral—are so close that that region is definitely within Europe’s sphere of influence. If we can move from panicking about exactly what is happening in Libya to considering how to invest over the next 10 to 30 years and how to put ourselves in a position where all the talk about what we do to make this our 1989 and to make the middle east and north Africa another example, along with central and eastern Europe, of how we can move countries to a more prosperous, democratic future, it will obviously be good for us and for them.

We need to be cautious. A lot of nonsense is talked about democratisation and it is very easy for us to imagine that we can somehow go into someone else’s society and create civil society and good governance and eliminate corruption when those are not things that we have proved very able to do in Kenya, Nepal or Afghanistan. That does not mean, however, that we can do nothing.

The lesson from the experience of central and eastern Europe is that progress is possible, but the kind of progress we should make is exactly the kind of progress that we have been speaking about. I applaud what the Government have said about access—to markets and to people—but the lesson from eastern Europe is that that needs to be adjusted. What was very smart about what we did in eastern Europe was that our policy, for example, towards Slovakia was different from our policy towards the Czech Republic—we were more open towards the Czech Republic, and people in Slovakia saw that and moved. Too often, our policy towards north Africa has been a one-size-fits-all policy. We now need a policy that not only no longer says that Tunisia is simply within France’s sphere of influence—that we will not do anything about Tunisia because that is a French affair—but says that Tunisia might deserve different treatment from countries such as Libya, and that Egypt might deserve different treatment from countries such as Morocco.

[Mr MacShane]

The hon. Gentleman is making a fascinating speech. Frankly, the comparisons with 1989 are wrong, because this is more like the crushing of what happened in Hungary or Prague than a gentle transition to democracy. We should never forget that Mrs Thatcher did not support German unification at that time. In 1980, when Solidarnosc was suppressed, many countries were quite happy to see stability restored and caution was the watchword of the day.

On the hon. Gentleman’s narrow point about how we treat Tunisia, when I was Europe Minister I tried to get Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria switched to the European department of the Foreign Office, but the Africanists put their little feet down and said, “No, they belong permanently to Africa.” Will he talk to his colleagues at the Foreign Office and get those countries treated as part of the broader south Mediterranean and European hinterland rather than African ex-colonies?

[Rory Stewart]

I disagree very strongly and I think that in 10 to 20 years’ time, the right hon. Gentleman will have been proved wrong. I think the situation is equivalent to 1989 and that is the direction in which those countries are heading. It is patronising and mistaken of him to believe that this is simply a repeat of the 1950s and 1960s.

Let us look at Libya specifically. Gaddafi is going to be a very peculiar, eccentric and isolated figure even within his own country. Everything is shifting against that man. When he came to power, the population was rural and there was an anti-colonial movement. He now faces a situation in which 80% of Libyans live in cities in which he is perceived as a colonial oppressor. He has gone from the bloodless revolution that brought him to power four decades ago to a bloody attack on his own people. What we are hearing in Egypt and Tunisia is not some accidental, sporadic pop-up that will be constrained by inevitable forces of tyranny or Arabic culture. It is probably something closer to what we have seen in central and eastern Europe and in Latin America in the past 20 to 30 years. Furthermore, it is in our political and moral interests to support it. Even if I am wrong and it is not an inevitability but only a probability that things are going in that direction, it is the direction in which we should be pushing. This is Britain’s opportunity and Europe’s moment, and that is the direction we need to go in.