| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
6.1 pm
Dr. John Gilbert (Dudley, East): I start by referring to a couple of subjects that were mentioned earlier. My hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark) spoke forcefully and fluently; I was delighted to hear his speech. I dissented from him on only one minor point. He said--I hope that he will correct me if I do not quote him accurately--that Europe cannot afford to spend the same amount of its resources on defence as the United States does.
Dr. Gilbert: I should be grateful for clarification.
Dr. Clark: That was not the message which I tried to convey. I was arguing that many of our European allies do not spend as much as they should if they are serious about the defence of Europe and about playing a bigger part in NATO.
Dr. Gilbert: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I agree entirely. I also happen to think that this country does not spend enough on defence. We, as a European Union, have started bragging to the Americans that we have a larger gross domestic product than they do, yet we continue to rely on them to defend us. It is no surprise that the Americans get a bit shirty about that from time to time. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his clarification, and I
am confident that he will be diligent in persuading our European allies to live up to their responsibilities in those matters.
I intervened during the speech by the Secretary of State regarding the unilateral abandonment of this country's sub-strategic nuclear capability. I believe that I can say without danger of being corrected--I am sure that Ministers are listening, so let us see whether they trip me up--that only in the most recent defence White Paper was there any mention of Trident being used in a sub-strategic role. I should be grateful to hear from any Minister, or any hon. Member, of a scenario in which they envisage using Trident in a sub-strategic role.
What would have happened in the Gulf war, had Saddam Hussein decided to use chemical weapons, not against his people, but against the forces that were invading his country? Is it the Government's position that we would have responded with a Trident attack on the Republican guard or Iraqi front-line troops, or would we have sent a Trident into Baghdad or Basra? As soon as one considers those propositions, their ludicrousness and the disproportionality of any such deployments become immediately apparent.
This country has been, or is in the process of being, unilaterally denuded of any sub-strategic nuclear capability, and in Europe that capability will shortly repose solely in the hands of the French.
The main theme of my speech is NATO enlargement. It may come as a surprise to some of my friends in this place, among whom I may have a reputation for being a hawk, that I view NATO enlargement with considerable dismay and concern.
I hope that the Government will give an assurance that any discussions about NATO enlargement will take place country by country, and not by groups of countries; in other words, that there will be no suggestion that, for example, the Visegrad group of countries will be considered as a bloc for admission, but individual countries will have to meet the criteria of NATO membership before they are considered.
This question remains, however: should the geographic expansion go ahead if a decision is confirmed? Should it include Poland, Hungary, or the Czech Republic? Most people consider those to be likely candidates. What about Slovakia? Should NATO eventually include the Baltic states? Once one starts to consider the ramifications of one or two of those possibilities, which I shall discuss, the difficulties soon emerge.
One aspect that has not been considered is the enormous cost to the existing members of NATO of further expansion. If one expands NATO, by definition one expands the remit of article 5 of the North Atlantic treaty, and that article refers to common defence. Common defence means nothing without an infrastructure, and without reasonable commonality of weapon systems and, above all, of communications equipment. No one can seriously believe that Poland, the Czech Republic or Hungary--let alone the Baltic states--are in an economic condition to make anything like a proportional contribution to the costs of that extension of NATO's capability towards the east. It follows that those contributions will have to be made by the existing members of NATO, and from that it follows--
Mr. Donald Anderson:
My right hon. Friend may be well aware that the United States Department of Defense
Dr. Gilbert:
I am much obliged to my hon. Friend for reminding the House of that extremely interesting analysis, but I remain persuaded that the additional costs will have to be borne proportionally by the existing members of NATO and will have to be found from existing defence budgets.
I am also concerned about certain geostrategic considerations. The first is the reaction of the senior members of the armed forces in the former Soviet Union--the generals. We all know that generals do not necessarily dictate policy, but it was interesting to note that General Lebed recently came to Brussels and made some mild remarks about the possibility of NATO expanding towards the east; as soon as he got back to Moscow, however, he sang a very different tune.
In the former Soviet Union, the morale of the armed forces is very poor. In that I include the land forces, the tactical air forces and the surface fleet. By winning the cold war, we hoped to see the end of revanchist nationalist Governments in what was the Soviet Union. It would be a serious miscalculation on our part to provoke public opinion in that country by deploying NATO troops on the eastern borders of these candidate member countries. That would send all the wrong signals to Russia, the Ukraine and Belarus. It would give them the impression that we still regard them as possible enemies, at a time when we are trying to woo them into the comity of western civilisation and culture.
If we start increasing the size of NATO, moreover, we shall immediately dilute its decision-making power. It is difficult enough to get decisions taken within the 16 member countries; once NATO is enlarged to include the three or four most likely member states, the problems will be infinitely worse. After all, we are not talking about countries with similar value systems, such as Sweden or Finland; we are talking about countries that have had dictatorships for more than 50 years. It would therefore be very difficult to keep the decision-making process as satisfactory as it is at the moment.
NATO, with enlargement, would face additional costs, a dilution of its decision-making powers, and conversion from a successful defensive alliance to a generalised security arrangement.
It might be argued, alternatively, that we should offer these countries non-aggression treaties. That, too, would be extremely dangerous. NATO should not try to give security guarantees which it is in no position to honour. The Poles have still not forgiven the west, especially Britain and France, for the guarantee that we promised them, but never delivered, in 1939. They are still extremely bitter, and it would be absolutely wrong to offer that sort of guarantee again.
The idea that this House would approve putting the lives of British troops at risk--quite apart from the logistical problems--in order to protect Estonia's eastern border is pure moonshine.
We need to continue energetically to develop confidence-building measures with the Russians and to develop the "Partnership for Peace": not to try to expand NATO in an easterly direction.
Most Russians these days no longer see a threat from the west. They used to think there was one, just as we used to think that there was a threat from the east. Their view today is that the west is yesterday's problem, the south is today's problem and the east is tomorrow's problem--none of which makes it advisable to push NATO further east.
Some people opine that we must not allow the Russians, especially their generals, to dictate our policy. That is the language of the cold war. It is, rather, a question of deciding on the most sensible policies that will enable us to live in peace with the former members of the Warsaw pact.
Some say that it does not matter what the Russians think because they are now militarily incompetent. People draw attention to the performance of their land forces in Afghanistan and Chechnya. Morale is low and they have had virtually no new equipment for years. Before we become too self-satisfied, however, we ought to remember the state of the British Army of the Rhine at the time of the Gulf war, when we had to cannibalise just about every piece of kit that moved in order to make a modest but none the less worthwhile contribution. In terms of equipment and logistics, the Gulf war seriously stretched our capabilities. And in military terms, it was not a war but an incident.
We may be tempted to congratulate ourselves on the state of the Russian surface fleet, which is now virtually invisible. The Russians should be grateful for the fact that they have got rid of that incredibly expensive incubus, a burden laid upon them by Admiral Gorshkov. The Russian surface fleet was never relevant in any possible Warsaw pact-NATO conflict. I can remember how unhappy it used to make the navy department in the MOD, but the United States admiral who used to be in charge of Naples, C in C South, never worried when the Minsk and the Kiev were prancing around the western Mediterranean or coming around the north cape. What did worry him was when those ships returned to port. The admiral knew perfectly well that, in the event of a conflict, the Russians would never risk their high-value surface fleet units at sea. So we should be careful about congratulating ourselves on the loss of that Russian capability.
The Russian tactical air forces are still the beneficiaries of some excellent new aeroplanes, although I was recently told that their fast jet pilots get between 15 and 30 hours' flying time a year. It is clear that a modern tactical air force cannot be sustained in that way.
There are other areas, however, where the successor states of the Soviet Union retain a major capability--ballistic nuclear submarines and hunter-killer SSNs. In many ways, they are the equivalent of the most modern American submarines, and they are probably more capable than the most modern British ones in terms of how deep they can go, their modernised missiles and their silence. Those are not the only criteria, I am well aware, that establish a submarine's effectiveness. Computer software is also very important and the Americans are still well ahead in that sphere.
The fact remains that these forces are being well trained. They are rehearsing their role, their morale is good and, as far as I know, the officers and men are being paid regularly. The same is true of their land and air-based strategic nuclear forces, which are both getting new kit--land-based missile systems and sophisticated long-range bombers. Moreover, there must be at least a question mark over whether the Russians are trying to develop a biological warfare capability. I make no allegation that they are doing so, but I insist that we simply do not know. Not so long ago, when the Russian leadership was not telling us the truth about the Russians' capabilities, there were suspicions that they were.
Another subject on which I should be grateful for a response from the Minister, if not tonight, then by way of a letter when he returns to his office, is the development of non-lethal warfare techniques. I referred to the matter in the Chamber a couple of debates ago, but did not even get the courtesy of a note from the Ministry of Defence, which I thought was a bit poor, either saying that I had got it all wrong or at least giving me an anodyne response. The Americans take the matter seriously and have already had a Department of Defense directive on it. I believe that they have a current programme of investment of some $37 million or £25 million in a private scheme to study the matter and have tried out the weapons in areas such as Somalia. Some of the weapons are pretty diabolical because they end up blinding instead of killing men and women, but other techniques are worthy of study because they can immobilise both electronic and moving equipment, and aeroplanes.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |