Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
WEDNESDAY 7 NOVEMBER 2001
MR SIMON
WEBB, AIR
MARSHAL JOE
FRENCH CBE FRAES
RAF AND MAJOR-GENERAL
TONY MILTON,
OBE, RM
Chairman
1. Mr Webb, Air Marshal, Major-General, welcome
to what is not only the first session of our current inquiry,
but the first public session of this new Defence Committee. In
this first evidence session in what is a preliminary inquiry into
the threat from terrorism we take as our starting point the MoD's
plans to revisit the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) and to add
a new chapter, as the Secretary of State described it, relating
to the debate on international terrorism. Thank you for the preliminary
briefing we had in the Ministry of Defence. At this stage we are
still determining the exact form our inquiry will take: not just
monitoring what you are doing, as we did when the SDR was being
researched and published, but we are still defining the form our
inquiry will take. It will certainly include homeland defence,
emergency planning, missile defence amongst the many subjects
on which we will have to deliver speedily. I suspect that events
will not wait for a leisurely royal-commission-type inquiry either
by the Ministry of Defence or ourselves. We will not in this session
be covering current operations for two reasons: one is that they
are very sensitive and this is being televised; you will have
to wait to read about some things in The Guardian tomorrow,
they certainly will not come from us. Secondly, our inquiry is
very broad anyway and frankly I do not think it would be appropriate
to intrude on what is already a very difficult and long agenda.
Anything else you would like to add before we commence hostilities?
(Mr Webb) Asymmetrically no doubt.
2. We are the weaker ones.
(Mr Webb) May I introduce my team and
explain for new members who they are and what they do. Air Marshal
Joe French is Chief of Defence Intelligence, which probably explains
itself. Major-General Tony Milton is the Director General for
Joint Doctrine and Concepts, which is a newish post which came
after the Strategic Defence Review and I am sure Tony will find
an opportunity to explain a bit more about the contribution Doctrine
and Concepts makes. This is very much a team looking at the forward
policy agenda and thank you for your understanding about the current
operations. Would it be helpful just to say a few words about
how we are approaching the studies here?
3. Please. It might remove at least 14 of our
questions and speed things up! Seriously, if there is anything
that needs to be said in private, then we will accommodate your
request.
(Mr Webb) Thank you for your understanding about that
too. The first point to make is that the Ministry of Defence and
the armed forces are only one segment of the British Government's
approach to this issue. This is being tackled across government
and amongst the key players are the Foreign Office on the foreign
policy content, a new part of government called the Civil Contingencies
Secretariat, which is now set up in the Cabinet Office which is
responsible for the management of crises within the UK. Obviously
the Home Office, Treasury and a range of other departments and
agencies are involved. All the time it is important to recognise
that we are but a segment of this and we spend a considerable
amount of effort making sure that we are in good co-ordination
with those other parts of government. We are looking at what Mr
Hoon has described as the new chapter of the Strategic Defence
Review under four main headings in the work we are now getting
underway and on which, as our memorandum indicated, we shall be
welcoming public debate. The first is to look at the strategic
context. We published a booklet about the strategic context of
defence which mentioned the asymmetric warfare issue. We shall
be looking at that and seeing whether any updating is required
of that. We shall be wanting to think quite hard about the basis
of terrorism, where it comes from, what its roots are. We shall
be looking at the risks in the broadest sense, we shall be looking
at legal issues, we shall be looking at the existing defence planning
assumptions. This is all as a backdrop to other work. One of the
things I expect we shall be doing is trying to generate a range
of what I call asymmetric events, in other words to look at the
sorts of things which might happen of which 11 September was an
example and perhaps in a cell where we shall do some work on this
with other people across government, particularly the Civil Contingencies
Secretariat, who will also be interested in asymmetric events.
We shall try to generate a series of events which will allow us
better to think through and study what the potential risks are.
That will give rise to some issues. We have identified four or
five issues which will come out in questioning which we think
are well worth debate before we get to conclusions. The second
leg of this is homeland defence. It is worth mentioning that the
armed forces share responsibilities in this arena obviously. We
are particularly interested in a classic defence sense in defending
the homeland, which nowadays may need to be read in a NATO and
European context and we shall no doubt get onto that, particularly
from the aircraft and seaborne missile type of threat. That is
very much Defence led business. Once you get on land and you are
talking about installations on land and a terrorist on foot or
in a vehicle or whatever, that tends to be very much more of a
police lead in some circumstances, certainly in dealing with the
Home Office end of the business. If sadly we have an incident,
then the consequence management is very much a matter for the
Civil Contingencies Secretariat. I just mention that distinction
and we can go into that in more detail if you like. Homeland defence
is certainly part of our study. To pick up a point you made, Chairman,
this is an area in which despite our desire to think through this
all very carefully and deeply, if we see things which need to
be done in that arena, particularly on the rogue aircraft threat
on which things have already been done, then we would take action
more quickly. Mr Hoon is quite clear that that is an area where
we will take immediate action; some of the rest of it will be
longer term. We then have a strand about countering terrorism
and General Milton will be able to talk about the doctrinal and
conceptual base for that. It is very much looking at the issue
of how far we try tackle it at a distance or on its way to us
or wait for it to come near to us; how we understand the bases
of terrorism, what is the best way of going about it, the whole
question later on in the study of the military capability which
is required to deal with that and all the components of a modern
military campaign, including for example information operations
which you mentioned in one of your reports as being a dimension
we should pay attention to. The fourth main strand will be to
look at the international and coalition dimension. Obviously we
are already in action in NATO from a defence point of view but
there is activity in the EU under pillar three, the internal security
end. There is the important role for ESDP, so we shall be doing
some work on that. Coupled with the important question of deterrence,
which is not just a question of defeating terrorism but deterring
it in the first place; we shall have a strand of work there which
will get into counter-proliferation and other issues of that kind.
All this will be underpinned by a clear conceptual base. That
is a quick conspectus of what we shall be getting into and I am
very happy to take your questions.
4. You can save yourself a lot of work by reading
the most important document, namely the Defence Committee's report
on the SDR published three years ago which is a document I am
sure you will locate somewhere—under a bookcase perhaps.
(Mr Webb) I have the extract in my papers and feel
adequately rebuked.
5. Including the gem—and no-one has admitted
guilt for this—that a terrorist attack could conceivably
give rise to an Article 5 commitment for NATO. Whoever was responsible
for what seemed to be idiocy at that time has powers of prophecy
and if he or she would come forward we should like to identify
him or her and congratulate them on their farsightedness. Thank
you very much. We shall be tracking what you are doing and as
we have not succeeded in developing an integrated committee structure
in this House, we shall be following areas which would not traditionally
be part of the Defence Committee's work, with the approval of
the appropriate other committees like Home Affairs, etcetera.
The SDR listed eight defence missions, covering current priorities,
etcetera. I shall not bore you with the details because obviously
you know them. Under which of these missions is Operation Veritas
being conducted? Or is it a new kind of mission not specifically
envisaged in the SDR?
(Mr Webb) It is new in one sense but fits well with
the conception behind the SDR in another sense. The SDR itself
reflected a shunt towards expeditionary warfare, towards the idea
that the main risks and threats to security were likely to be
at some distance from the UK, possibly outside the boundaries
of our alliances and that therefore we should be in a position
to deploy forces rapidly and effectively into those areas. That
has been something which has been built up very successfully since
the Strategic Defence Review and the large exercise just wrapping
up now in Oman, Saif Sareea, was a test of the key elements of
that and has proved to be a very successful test. In the broad
sense expeditionary warfare was part of the SDR and things like
the acquisition of the deep strike element of Tomahawk and the
capacity for those kinds of operations was very much within the
sense of the SDR. What is new about it, which is why I am hesitant
about saying Veritas is part of our existing tasks and missions,
is the scale and difficulty of the task that may face us. There
is a larger threat out there, larger risk out there than we had
previously expected. That does not necessarily tell you anything
about how we are going to deal with it, but it is a variation
on a problem that was in the SDR. A lot of what we have done is
very relevant, but we do not want to sit on our laurels and say
everything is fine. As Mr Hoon has indicated, we want to do the
new chapter and check out whether we still have the right capabilities
or whether adjustments are needed.
6. Peacetime security was the first listed mission
of our armed forces in the SDR. Within it the SDR states in paragraph
46 that "support against terrorism of all kinds will remain
of the highest priority for the foreseeable future". What
kind of actions did the SDR identify in regard to this anti-terrorism
capability?
(Mr Webb) It would be fair to say that the SDR in
itself did not lead to a huge increase in that area because we
had had to develop so much capacity to deal with the problems
of terrorism arising in Ireland and because we had, through a
series of incidents such as the well-known Iranian embassy siege,
aircraft hijacks and so on, to consider the defence role in support
of dealing with those kinds of incidents before. Though there
was an increased emphasis on the terrorism side, I do not think
it led to a very substantial increase in capacity. Is that your
impression, Tony?
(Major-General Milton) Yes, that is very much the
case; I would agree with that.
7. Did NATO really think about having an anti-terrorist
function after 11 September or was anything being planned before?
I can recall in the 1980s immense hostility from the Foreign Office
and the Ministry of Defence and NATO for any involvement in counter-terrorism.
Can you recall any point at which NATO began to realise that one
of its military functions should be dealing with the threat of
terrorism?
(Mr Webb) There was a reluctance in the past because
it was seen as a route into countries' internal affairs, which
an alliance like NATO is always careful about. One of the differences
of 11 September is this question of scale. Therefore it did not
take us very long to conclude that the scale and the engagement
against the national command system of a leading country, various
other elements of 11 September, added up to something new. Of
course lots of countries within NATO had been developing counter-terrorist
capacity of one kind or another. Spain, for example has had a
substantial problem with ETA. Countries vary a bit in their capacity
but it had been around and there had been discussions about it
but we had not quite seen the need to collectivise it in the way
that 11 September has changed the scene. May I say throughout
that it is a very helpful debate because it stimulates us but
we need to be a bit careful about stating too many conclusions
too soon to you? This is the sort of thing we need to take a month
or two before we air something for our conclusions.
8. One of the list of missions related to defence
diplomacy. To what extent has defence diplomacy, which appeared
to be largely directed at former Warsaw Pact countries, put us
in a better security position?
(Mr Webb) There has been a big programme with the
former Warsaw Pact countries and it has had one effect which is
interesting. We have had a lot of contact with Russia, for example,
at a detailed level. You probably know that we have been running
a resettlement programme for Russian officers all through the
1990s and that has given us contact with the Russian Ministry
of Defence, so when Mr Hoon and I went there in October that was
one strand of existing contact which we could build upon to talk
about international terrorism. The other point about defence diplomacy
is that it has built links on quite a wide range of countries
so that we have contacts on a defence level with lots of countries.
When we start getting into coalitions and particularly if we start
needing to put together more complicated coalitions, we will find
that we know people because we have had the diplomacy mission,
we have perhaps had training, they have been to staff colleges
here, we have had a deliberate programme of contact. This is not
to say we could not do some more, but it has certainly given us
a starting point with very many countries. It has been very helpful
from that point of view.
(Major-General Milton) I may be able to give some
practical examples. My organisation is furthering peace support
operations and we find ourselves dealing with a lot of non-NATO
countries, India, Bangladesh, South America. All this is building
up confidence, it is making us understand them better and they
us. Breaking down that mistrust, it will make coalitions easier
to form, certainly at the military to military level.
9. Parallel with defence diplomacy is all the
action over the 1990s in relating better to potential applicant
members to NATO with the Outreach programme and the action plan,
all hopefully yielding advantage. In the current environment,
is there a need for more defence diplomacy of the sort undertaken
so far, or does it have to be refocused to reflect new priorities
of the current security situation?
(Mr Webb) I would need to think about that. There
is this question that if the international environment does require
us to operate in coalitions, one of the things I have learned
is that you cannot just chuck military units together and expect
them to work without having known one another very well. Sometimes
this is done very rapidly. If you look at something like Task
Force Harvest in Macedonia which was mostly a country we knew,
sometimes you need to do this very quickly. There is a question
for us about whether we should do more systematic contacts, aimed
rather more specifically at coalitions for particular types of
operation. We do it on the peacekeeping side; maybe we ought to
do a bit more of that. It is certainly something worth thinking
about. As ever, we need to balance resources against effect.
10. The SDR sets as broad benchmarks for the
capabilities of our armed forces that they should be able to sustain
a major international crisis comparable to the Gulf War, or two
smaller deployments simultaneously. Things have grown more complicated
since 1998. Given the nature of our potential commitments in Afghanistan
against continuing commitments in the Balkans, Sierra Leone, the
Falklands, etcetera, are these benchmarks still valid? If we find
ourselves with an increasing number of relatively small scale
commitments, do we have the necessary resources, manpower, logistical
capability to sustain them?
(Mr Webb) There are two questions in there, if I might
suggest. There is one about overall scale and one about mix. On
mix, there is a question about whether one should orient oneself
a bit more towards the smaller operations which have been a feature
of the last few years, the Sierra Leone kind, and away perhaps
from some of the larger scale. However, one has to be very careful
about this because one of the things we must be very careful to
sustain is the capacity for high intensity and integrated operations
which is the keynote of what we can offer to the international
security environment. One needs to proceed with caution there.
It is a bit too soon to say, but I certainly think there is a
question for us to be thinking about, about whether we should
give more specific emphasis to small operations. Against that,
perhaps we have become a little more proficient at handing over
operations to other people. Harvest is a very good example. We
went and did an operation rather below medium scale but we did
it with 30 days and now we are not there significantly and other
people have taken it on. So there is that dimension too. There
are number of things to think about here and as we get to the
back end of the study and work out what tasks we need to meet,
we shall probably come back just to check whether that looks right.
I suspect we shall find it looks a bit more right than it does
at the moment, but let us think it through.
(Major-General Milton) In military terms the greatest
stresses on these concurrent operations are the enablers, the
deployability, communications, intelligence. It is those areas,
those enabling functions which a large number of concurrent operations
puts the greatest stress on. That is the area we need to look
at. The SDR did make major changes in that and it did bring forward
and readjust priorities on programming for those enablers. That
process is not finished yet, but as we move in that direction,
we are going to become more able to conduct these various concurrent
operations. It is a big stress, there is no doubt about it.
Mr Howarth
11. Given that there is a new chapter currently
being written to the SDR, given what you say and despite your
suggestion that a rebalancing of the forces will be a way of meeting
the SDR idea on the one major or two minor deployments, surely
the question is going to arise that you are going to be sending
in another invoice to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and it could
be quite a substantial invoice.
(Mr Webb) I do not want to get too far beyond what
Mr Hoon and others have already said about this subject on the
floor of the House. We will be doing the work to look at what
we think is needed in order to meet Britain's defence, particularly
in this homeland arena and in countering terrorism. I am not feeling
under any constraint not to raise the issue of a cheque. On the
other hand, we all share the Government's aspirations for proper
control of public expenditure in a general sense. All I would
say is that we are going to do the work based on what we think
is needed and very much at the end, and there is no point in me
speculating about it at the moment, we shall see what additions
might be necessary on this side, how they match into the overall
position. It is just not worth speculating at this point. No-one
has told us to constrain ourselves in that direction, so we shall
not.
12. Surely it is a question of flagging up the
necessity for the public to accept that Defence has to command
a higher proportion of the national cake if we are going to meet
all the aspirations which you are setting out.
(Mr Webb) I shall make a note of that.
Chairman: We have been saying exactly
this for the last 20 years. There was a very interesting article
in today's Financial Times on the demands in the US for enhancing
homeland defence, "$256m to improve security on Capitol Hill".
Whether you like it or not, whether the Treasury likes it or not,
the aspirations, if matched by resources, are going to be not
insubstantial. Frankly people have to be aware of that if we want
greater security. It will be rather difficult to improve security
within the constraints of existing budgets, particularly in the
Ministry of Defence. That is above your pay grade, Mr Webb and
we shall refer to that ad nauseam later on.
Mr Jones
13. A lot of commentators on 11 September said
we were into a new world now and a new set of situations. Are
we facing a new type of terrorism? September 11 was certainly
the first time we saw airliners used as a weapon, as they were.
Are we going to see a ratcheting up of atrocities, possibly the
use of unconventional weapons? Are we thinking that we are going
to be using new technologies and possibly the use of weapons we
had not thought of? I do not think many people before 11 September
had thought an airliner would be used as a weapon. Does that make
homeland security more difficult in terms of the insecurity we
are facing as a nation?
(Mr Webb) There are some very interesting and important
points there. I said that we have some big subjects for debate
and you have gone on to at least two or three of those. You can
say that most of the ingredients of 11 September had been present
before. There has actually been an attempt to use an airliner
in that way, there has been a certain number of suicide attacks
as by Tamil Tigers. And other people have had a go at central
government authority; the IRA put a mortar into 10 Downing Street.
Individual elements have in some ways been present before, but
it was the co-ordination, the planning, the scale and the evident
willingness of the people to sacrifice their own lives which has
created a new dimension and that is why I am sure Mr Hoon is right
to get us to do a new chapter. One of the concerns I have, and
this is the challenge of the policy debate in a way, is to try
to ensure that we have not set some new threshold of horror that
other people feel they have to meet; in other words that killing
5,000 people in a major country's major city does not become something
that other people try to do better than, which leads you into
looking at unconventional weapons and a range of dangerous devices.
That is one of the most important reasons in my view why the deterrent
side of this policy review is so important. We need to find ways
of deterring people from that action and it is a very good reason
indeed for taking firm action at an early stage. That is one important
dimension you raised. The other question is how far we can continue
to expect to get specific intelligence of an attack so we can
counter it, preferably offshore, and base our security policy
on that and how far we may not be able to assume that and have
to look at our vulnerabilities against capabilities. One of the
reasons why I want to set up this cell I was talking about to
look at asymmetric events is so I can get some people, scientists,
military people, intelligence people, to model what might be in
the minds of people who are thinking of doing that. This will
obviously have to remain pretty secret because we do not want
to say what we think they might be doing. Then we shall look at
our vulnerabilities to that. We will need to debate out this question
of specific intelligence against general vulnerabilities. It is
an important policy issue which we shall want to think through.
(Air Marshal French) The major ingredient which was
new here was very much the scale of 11 September. If we are actually
looking at asymmetric threats, we should not set it from the military
perspective just in the context of terrorism. It is something
your own Committee has reported on in the past that when you are
looking at military activity, asymmetry is very much a part of
that. You only have to look at the likes of Sri Lanka with the
odd speedboat being used to go alongside a ship of that country,
look at some of the tactics Iran seems to be looking at with swarm
tactics where you use several very small boats which can go alongside
a ship. You could argue that the incident with the United States
ship Cole earlier this year falls into that sort of category.
When we talk of scale, we should not lose sight of the fact that
the bombings, if we put it in the context of this event on 11
September by Osama bin Laden, and of the bombing of the embassies
in East Africa two or three years ago and the Cole incident earlier
this year, whilst there was intelligence of a possible UBL attack,
it was very difficult to get details of what, when and where.
On your point about ratcheting up, if there is any ratcheting
up then it is a matter of whether this provides a benchmark and
we cannot ever give a precise answer on that. Surprise is one
of the key principles of war: it also is one of the advantages
the terrorist has. When you say ratcheting up, are you talking
of that over a period of weeks, months? The element of surprise
could involve leaving your next terrorist act for several years.
You can instill unrest or terror by not actually doing something
but threatening to do it. There are very many ingredients which
we shall have to look at and the fundamental cause of some of
this terrorism which we can perhaps look at early on from a broad
deterrent aspect. One of the worries which was highlighted in
the media today is this whole question of a slight splitting of
hairs of weapons of mass effect which is what the category of
11 September was; very ingenious in terms of using an aircraft
as opposed to weapons of mass destruction. This is where the chemical,
biological, radiological and nuclear aspects come into play. It
is no secret that from 1993 onwards UBL has been looking for that
sort of capability and that has been highlighted in the media
today. Innovation is one of those aspects we shall have to look
at and terrorism down the years has shown that there are technologies
which can be exploited and the terrorist can very much do that.
Just looking at first glance at what happened on 11 September,
when we talk of suicide attacks, and obviously many terrorists
were killed in the process, there is perhaps the question of education
and motivation. Traditionally we rather thought of a suicide bomber
as perhaps a tanker truck driver or something similar and a rather
simple foot soldier to put it in very crude terms, whereas you
are actually looking now at a nature of terrorism where you have
some of the perpetrators who have gone through very good scientific
degrees; the training ground can be in one country for that aspect
of their training. They have then gone to great trouble to learn
how to fly aircraft, perhaps not beyond a rudimentary degree but
this has been brought up over a significant amount of time. This
comes into the element that there are so many different facets
of terrorism that we have to look at again and try to get a better
understanding of it. Yes, I would have a bit of caution as to
what you mean by ratcheting up: unconventional, yes, that is the
nature of terrorism. We have to see whether there are new strands
which fall out of what happened on 11 September. Yes, we must
always be alert to the imaginative use of new technologies and
other ways of perpetrating these acts.
14. You have touched on the scale and planning
and intelligence of 11 September. Not wanting you to divulge confidential
or classified information, but does that set some clear questions
in terms of intelligence gathering, how we use it and in terms
of the review, is that going to have a resource implication in
terms of the overall Defence budget?
(Air Marshal French) Yes, it will be reviewed, but
as I am sure you will appreciate, the Security Service are actually
responsible for the assessments for terrorist activity and that
comes under the Intelligence and Security Committee and I am sure
they will be going through a similar process to this. We shall
link into that but I would not want to go beyond that at this
stage.
Chairman: I must tell you that they are
as furtive as you are. In fact one of the former members is sitting
behind us watching what we are asking.
Syd Rapson
15. Is our friend Mr bin Laden creating polarisation
or is he tapping into a natural global resentment towards the
West and especially the USA? What can we do to counter that?
(Mr Webb) We need to be careful not to talk him up
too much. There is a risk in all these situations of over-generalising.
The huge weight of opinion across the world, including Islamic
countries of all kinds, has been to completely dissociate themselves
from this. We just need to be careful that we do not make too
much of him. He may just be someone who has wild ideas, access
to money and a number of associates, including of course help
and integration with the Taleban, which is a complicating factor
in Afghanistan. Forgive me for not going too far into this, because
it gets a bit close to the current operation, but I personally
think we should be careful about building people up too far and
that is my comment on that.
16. The attack in America and the anthrax attacks
have frightened people across the world. The psychological effects
of that are quite devastating. Is this a new development? I have
certainly not witnessed it before. Does it need to be specifically
addressed in the SDR? Panic and worry and fear is spreading all
over the place because of the unknown content of delivery and
where it is going to happen and it is something that I certainly
have never experienced in any of my readings. It is new and does
the SDR need to look at that very, very carefully?
(Mr Webb) I am sorry to be bureaucratic about this
but a lot of this really is for the Home Office and the Civil
Contingencies Secretariat. They have done a rather good job in
trying to get this calibrated within the UK. You cannot take away
from the risks, but on the other hand, you do not want to exaggerate
them. What we do know from a defence point of view is that there
are quite well made contingency plans. I personally have participated
in exercises on how to deal with these kinds of situations in
the past and we helped the civil authorities in what I hope I
can claim was a rather well integrated way. Where we have specialist
capacity for example on disposal of explosive ordnance, bomb disposal
or on the nature of some of these chemical or biological agents
we, the Ministry of Defence, help civil authorities with that.
I think it is important to try to get it into perspective. I am
glad you mentioned this, because part of the study we shall be
doing is trying to help and our dialogue with you is a way. What
you feel is the mood in the constituencies is in a way part of
what we should be tackling because we should be going to that,
trying not to be stupidly reassuring but on the other hand trying
to get the thing in some perspective. That is part of our job
and your comments are important to us.
17. To reflect the mood in the constituencies,
the people who have spoken to me have been fairly confident about
the military and the Home Office dealing with the known threats
in the past, the bomb threats, the expected terror weapons which
perhaps the IRA would use. We are fairly confident that people
can deal with that. There is a great concern as to whether we
are competent enough to deal with the anthrax problem if it were
to hit us. In America they seem to be lost and people are in need
of it. There might well be a need for departments to concentrate
on that to ease the tension of ordinary people. The fear is in
everyone, even myself. If I see some white powder, I am not sure
whether to report it or not. That is the feeling in the constituencies.
(Mr Webb) Thank you.
Chairman
18. It appears that bin Laden has a very good
Psy-Ops operation. I wish we had somebody who had the skills to
frighten two thirds of the world by issuing a video; a very good
press department too, but we have also. Both attacks have had
significant psychological implications for the populations affected.
What lessons have we learnt? I know we have gone—not many
in this room—through the Second World War and the devastation
and the psychological impact. What lessons do you think we have
learnt from what has happened over the last two or three months?
(Mr Webb) This is a particular one on which we need
a bit of time to get a decent perspective. Let me give you an
initial answer, not just to stave it off like that. May I make
one point which does not always come through which is that he
was responsible for a terrible act, but he did not have a strategic
effect on United States' policy. If he thought he was going to
change their policy in some respect in the Middle East, he has
not, indeed it is pretty clear that not only the US Government
but also the Congress have not reacted in that way at all, but
they have been strengthened in their resolve both to deal with
him and the Taleban and not to be deflected from the normal process
of developing their policy. I should like to say—and I am
getting a bit emphatic here—that he has not succeeded, he
has failed and if this were happening in Britain I suspect we
would be equally robust to that. That is one important thing we
need to keep saying. We used to say that about other terrorist
organisations domestically and it is very important to get that
across. I do think that it would be good to see whether we could
find a way of dealing with the fear point that Mr Rapson brought
up, that we ought to try to see whether we can counter that fear
by being able to get it in proportion. It is tricky, because one
does not want to downplay risks unnecessarily. The best I can
say is that the information operation which is part of modern
military practice is a component of our study. I mentioned it
in passing but it will be part of the strand which Tony will be
helping us with and we shall be part of that. There are some issues
around being able to respond rapidly to getting these kinds of
incidents into perspective. Our Ministers have got very good at
that but we need to go over whether we are supporting them well
enough with all the techniques and what to do if the stories are
coming out of a new source we do not normally deal with, for example.
(Major-General Milton) This psychological element
is absolutely critical. May I just quote briefly from our British
Defence Doctrine, which you have been given copies of fairly recently.
We say that the manoeuvrist approach, which is the approach we
seek to follow, is one in which shattering the enemy's overall
cohesion and will to fight rather than his materiel is paramount.
There is nothing new in this and it is something we would aim
to do ourselves. The trick is how we manage it defensively for
ourselves but then apply that to our opponent. That is what we
need to look at very carefully. It is this business of perception
management and the philosophy of kill one, terrify ten thousand.
How we manage that is absolutely key and we shall be looking at
that continually.
Mr Crausby
19. May I expand on the feeling in the constituencies
to those who are not necessarily frightened but are aggressive?
I was shocked in my constituency to hear how opposed some members
of the Muslim community—and I emphasise a tiny minority
of the Muslim community—were to America, the depth of their
opposition to the USA. How much internal threat is there? How
much can we deal with that and more importantly how do we take
the minority communities along the road with us, not to overplay
Osama bin Laden or anyone else, but just to ensure that we really
are all pushing in the right direction?
(Mr Webb) I really am going to step aside on that
one because that really is not a job for the Ministry of Defence.
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