Examination of Witnesses (Questions 200-219)
WEDNESDAY 28 NOVEMBER 2001
AIR MARSHAL
SIR TIM
GARDEN, KCB, AND
PROFESSOR PAUL
ROGERS
Patrick Mercer
200. You will both be aware of the highly innovative
and extremely successful human and technical advances that have
been made against the campaign in Northern Ireland. In particular
it strikes me as being strange, I understand that command is not
purely military, there is a share of both Home Office and military,
these organisations are not being vastly expanded or plans are
not being put in place to use these organisations to combat the
threat we have been talking about?
(Professor Rogers) I think one has to recognise the
events of 11 September are related very much to the United States
and its own intelligence gathering and security operations. The
United States has tended to take a much stronger view towards
signal intelligence, allied forces and reconnaissance and far
less in terms of on the ground operatives. It has been primarily
a United States action in terms of responding to the various attacks
that we have seen in the Gulf and else where over the last 10
years. In other words, I do not think there has been a recognition
within the United States community of the kind of lessons that
might come out of Northern Ireland. I think we also have to recognise
that in the case of the conflict in Northern Ireland you have
a whole range of security and intelligence gathering but beyond
that a huge range political moves to actually address the core
problems from which the troubles in Northern Ireland have arisen.
In terms of the longer term perspective of progress towards peace
in Northern Ireland, while the intelligence and other techniques
have been significant I think the political and economic action
are the ones which have really given real cause that we are moving
into a more peaceful time.
201. The whole concept of deterrence and reassurance
in Northern Ireland has been taken several rungs up the ladder,
attacks being detected at an earlier stage rather than being interdicted.
(Professor Rogers) The problem is that Northern Ireland
is a province within the United Kingdom, it is an integral part
of the British economic system. What one would be talking about
is having an equivalent of that in, for example, Saudi Arabia,
Afghanistan, Algeria or Egypt. In other words, what a government
might do within its territorial boundaries may be much more difficult
to apply by a government in areas which it does not have control
over.
202. I heard you talk about extending the Ulster
model into mainland United Kingdom. I was talking about extending
the Ulster model into mainland United Kingdom.
(Professor Rogers) I suspect to some extent that may
already be happening.
(Sir Tim Garden) I have some difficulty, to be honest,
with a direct comparison to Northern Ireland terrorism. Although
there were, of course, hunger strikers who were prepared to die
for the cause in Northern Ireland, by and large most of the terrorists
prefer to survive to fight another day in Northern Ireland, which
suggests that the deterrence can operate. If your idea is that
you want to die then deterrence becomes much more difficult in
this particular case.
Patrick Mercer: I understand that.
Kevan Jones
203. Just picking up on the point you are making
about having somebody in charge of homeland defence. Clearly terrorists
do not recognise Whitehall's bounds and responsibilities. To what
extent, if did you appoint, whether it be a cabinet minister or
some supremo like in the United States, would they be thwarted
by the internal Whitehall departmentalism which will continue?
The only alternative is to have one joined up department, which
would be very difficult. It would be very difficult for anybody
who had that job to fight against the departmentalism that is
endemic in Whitehall.
(Sir Tim Garden) That is why I said it needs to be
considered. I think what you have suggested there is a very real
problem because there is nothing worse that ending up with a job
where you get all of the flak when it goes wrong and you do not
have any control over the resources to make it go right. That
is part of the problem that Tom Ridge is having, he has a very
impressive set of terms of reference but actually getting all
of the departments to point in the same direction and the various
intelligence agencies and, of course, the added problem in the
United States of the States having a different view to Federal
Government, all of that means that he is getting quite a lot of
criticism. In a way we are better placed than the United States
because we are used to authoritarian ministers directing everybody
to get on with things. It would seem to me that if it were to
work it would need to be a pretty senior figure who had the ability
to knock heads together, move resources from one area to another
and it needs to be somebody who has no other remit. The reason
I think it needs to be a single departmental activity is that
they must not have any special interests of their own, apart from
promoting the security of the citizens of the United Kingdom at
home. That would be quite a radical change, which is why I say
it looks like a possible way forward. I think the worst thing
would be to end up with a sort of public figure who is told that
it is your problem, you go on the television and explain what
we are doing, and all of that, but does not actually have the
whip to crack to get the resources shifted where they are needed.
204. A terrorist tsar?
(Sir Tim Garden) We do not need a terrorist tsar.
Chairman: We have a couple of questions on United
Kingdom Defence Doctrine.
Mike Hancock
205. I want to ask those questions, but I am
interested in the Cabinet post, I listened very interestingly
to the health minister in France, who also has the direct responsibility
for handling the response to terrorism and threats to the public
and the home based terrorism by the French government. He was
saying that has been very successful. The French people have looked
to the appointment of a single individual who was going to coordinate
the approach as being very reassuring, particularly because he
is such a well known personality and has a giant ego himself.
(Sir Tim Garden) He would need one of those.
206. He is not short of jumping in front of
camera. He tries to say something about the issue on a regular
basis to the people of France, telling them what they are doing
to bring equipment to bear and put pressure on local government
and resourcing it. The issue he raised was the fact that they
had to significantly increase their financial contribution to
home based support, but the consequence was that they had to reduce
expenditure within the normal defence budget. When you talked
about how we paid, if we assume in reality there is not going
to be a great deal of new money then there is a great threat there,
is there not, to the rest of the defence review and what gets
moved and what gets dropped. Do you have any suggestion—we
have Mr Hoon coming here this afternoon, it is good question for
him—if we are not going to get a great deal of new money
where do you suggest, from your planning background, cuts should
be?
(Sir Tim Garden) My first rejoinder would be that
it does not come from defence. We are now spending 2.5 per cent
of GDP on defence, when in the whole of the Cold War we thought
we could afford five per cent, or thereabouts. We are scratching
round with half of the proportion of GDP and doing more, a lot
more. I would not accept the question to start with but if forced,
as inevitably happens in these things—and I worry about
the word rebalancing which was in Mr Hoon's statement, "adding
a chapter and rebalancing", which to me is MoD speak for
zero sum games in terms of resources. The SDR really needs money
put into it just to keep it at the level we were all talking about
in 1998. There are big problems. What are you going to do? I can
give you the list of the equipment programme, you know it as well
as me. You can then argue whether particular aspects of it are
so important that you are prepared to put at risk, if that is
the only place you can get the money from, your ability to respond
to real disasters at home. The answer would always be, I would
have thought, that the need to protect our citizens at home is
more important than what the SDR was talking about which, by and
large, were wars of choice. We thought it was important to contribute
to international security and stabilise places, and the like,
and we have done a pretty good job of that, but we have to draw
our horns in, would be the argument, and in a way that would undermine
what Paul Rogers was advocating that we need to be doing more
overseas with DFID, as well as MoD and the Foreign Office, we
need to be stabilising the world even more now. It would be a
short-term important change of priorities which might have long-term
negative consequences. I would still come back and say, do not
get the money from defence.
207. I can move on the issues relating to our
current British Defence Doctrine, do you believe it is flexible
enough at the present time to really move in the right direction
in combating terrorism or is it too set in its ways?
(Sir Tim Garden) I think the military element of combating
terrorism is such a narrow part of the whole activity that it
is a bit impossible to start answering that question. Obviously
we have a number of niche capabilities that if the war is being
conducted, as it is at the moment in a far away country, we can
show that we are serious players and we do some things which are
real military capabilities. If we did not have one or other of
those the United States would have come up with its own one. We
have flexible forces, we have very small forces, they really are,
if they were fully up to strength and we are asking them to do
a lot of different things which they do pretty successfully. I
do worry that this run of successes is making us feel that we
will always have a run of successes. If you have not enough money
and not enough people and a run of successes which says we can
do anything you might just overcook it one day. I have worries
about that. We have done pretty well so far. That reassures me
that whatever the government wants the Armed Forces to do they
do it pretty well, whether it is foot and mouth or helping a failed
state in Sierra Leone, that range of activities
(Professor Rogers) I would agree with Tim, in essence
the defence policy is only one part of the problem when it comes
to dealing with the question of political violence and terrorism
and Britain's Armed Forces have proved themselves to be probably
more versatile than most over the last 10 years and they have
embraced some of the peacekeeping roles really quite effectively.
I think we are still stuck with some of the Cold War relics, like
Trident and Eurofighter, although I understand Eurofighter has
performed reasonably well in its trials in Afghan airspace in
recent weeks. Essentially I think that is a kind of past legacy
which we just have to live with. The forces have adapted quite
strongly but I would share Tim's view, that in a sense it is only
one small part of the kind of problem we are facing and that does
brings us back to the whole question of the nature of defence
review, security review and the need for more joined up action
in government.
Mike Hancock: That is an interesting bit of
news there that suggests that Eurofighter had been flying over
Afghan airspace, that is interesting.
Chairman
208. I do not think Roger said that.
(Professor Rogers) I did say that.
209. You said the Eurofighter?
(Professor Rogers) There is word abroad it has been
deployed in that theatre, yes.
Mike Hancock
210. That is exactly what he did say. That is
a question we should ask Mr Hoon this afternoon.
(Sir Tim Garden) Please do not suggest I said it!
211. There may be a suggestion you were in the
cockpit, maybe you would like the thought of that! Let us develop
what you said about the British Defence Doctrine. We were told
in a recent evidence session that British Defence Doctrine highlights
the importance of attacking the enemy's "centre of gravity"
and defending our own. If the centre of gravity for us is maintaining
cohesion of the coalition, which includes Middle Eastern countries,
do we face a dilemma in prosecuting offensive action which puts
that cohesion at risk? What are the consequences of a mistake
in that direction? It goes back to what you were saying about
how do you do something about the insurgencies in countries. Would
you say Al-Qaeda is looking at massive intervention to prevent
problems there and that the reaction in the rest of the Middle
East would be that it would be a catastrophe for that whole region
if that was to occur?
(Sir Tim Garden) I watched the evidence session that
came through the wonders of the Parliamentary Channel and I have
to say I listened to that with slight surprise. It seemed to me
to be the transferring of a military war fighting doctrine on
to a particular set of circumstances and the transfer did not
seem to work very well. What we do know about counter terrorist
operations, and the United Kingdom has long experience in it,
is that you need special approaches to each one, because they
are all different. You do need to be rebuilding or getting rid
of the injustices and the fear among the passive supporters in
most cases. You also need to be doing good intelligence and you
need to be preventing attacks. Those are, sort of, common to all
of the different counter- terrorist activities. Trying to, if
you like, put the template of the military doctrine bid on to
this seems to me not to work desperately well, maybe I just did
not understand what General Milton was saying.
(Professor Rogers) If you take the example of Saudi
Arabia, yes, clearly if there was major destabilisation within
the Saudi regime this would present a real quandary for the United
States because on the one hand there would be a real risk to oil
security but on the other hand any kind of major intervention
could have very serious regional implications. That takes us on
to the related issue of whether the current US war on terrorism
moves on to engage Iraq, because here there is very considerable
concern within the Saudi government that this should not happen
and real fears that if the United States does move on to, in some
way, tackle the Saddam Hussain regime then the Saudi Government
will find itself in a lot of difficulty with a substantial part
of its own population. It represents a real dilemma for the United
States.
(Sir Tim Garden) In fact it might not be military.
One of the implications is that we may have a better chance of
getting the Smart Sanctions regime in the UN done as a result
of all this. There are other levers apart from the military.
212. Does the cohesion of the coalition start
to come apart once you move away from Afghanistan? Do you feel
that the current war on terrorism is for the most part simply
defined as the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and the issue in Afghanistan?
Do you think there is a willingness in that cohesion to go beyond
the current bounds?
(Professor Rogers) It depends very much on how it
goes beyond it. I do not think we should overestimate the extent
of the current coalition. There was tremendous support for the
United States across a very large part of the global community
after 11 September. The support is less strong now as the conflict
in Afghanistan moves through. The coalition is essentially very
much US-led and US dominated, with Britain playing a significant
role, and relatively quite small roles for a limited number of
European countries and virtually nothing in the way of a role
for NATO, apart from the important AWACS deployment to the United
States. The coalition within the region I think one would have
to say is rather flaky in terms of countries such as Iran and
Pakistan. The central Asian republics, such as Uzbekistan and
Tajikistan are gaining quite heavily from the current conflict
because of the flow of resources into these countries. Probably
the most successful member of this unusual coalition would be
Russia, which has been able to put some forces into Northern Afghanistan,
has a very high degree of influence with the Northern Alliance
and is in the remarkable position that its very heavy rearming
of the Northern Alliance has actually been paid for largely by
the United States, and meanwhile Russia is in a far safer position
in terms of its behaviour in Chechneya at least at present and
over the next year or two. We have to be careful about really
looking at how far that coalition does run, particularly in relation
to the tensions between the Israelis and the Palestinians which
do loom large in the Middle East.
(Sir Tim Garden) I think we are in danger of getting
ourselves slightly muddled in our terms because the United States
talks about the war against terrorism, which is an unfortunate
term, it is a bit like the war on drugs and the war on crime and
it means and all-out effort. Then we use the word "coalition"
and we tend to think of that in Gulf War terms, that we put together
a military coalition to do military things in the Gulf and some
contributors were giving basic contributions. This one is a much
more complex one, if we are talking about a long-term operation
to reduce the threat of terrorism worldwide, which is a rather
long-winded way of saying war on terrorism, what has happened
in the Security Council has been important, because you have the
Russians and the Chinese pointing in the same direction with the
rest of us; you have the Security Council able to do things, you
have the United Nations able to the sponsor the current conference
at the Petersberg Hotel in Königswinter. You have lots of
different coalition efforts, the Iranians are, I would argue,
doing rather well out of this at the moment. They have been brought
back into the international community, the Americans were very
reluctant to talk to Iran before, it is now an important player
in this. I think as Afghanistan goes into the post conflict resolution
phase there will then be considerations about the way the international
community deals with other failing and failed states. That does
not necessarily mean dropping bombs on them, it may mean putting
aid in, it may mean rebuilding them, it may mean sending people
in to help them. There are a whole set of different coalitions
that were built from that. I think we get a bit confused about
the coalition of the war on terrorism and think about it in Gulf
terms.
Jim Knight
213. Just to follow that up, how do you respond
to what is, perhaps, an optimistic scenario that some of these
failed states you talked about they realised they are, perhaps,
harbouring terrorist cells or whatever, that is clearly pointed
out to them, they look at what happened in Afghanistan and get
very concerned that it might happen to them and then invite the
international community or the United States or whatever to come
in and sort out terrorist problems, is that at all likely?
(Sir Tim Garden) I would have thought that was highly
unlikely to be honest, but that would make life very much easier.
It may be that as long as we do what we say we are going to do
in Afghanistan that is to start rebuilding it and put the resources
in they may well say this is a good way of getting ourselves going.
One of the problems with failed states is they do not have a government
that can make these sort of coherent decisions, they have a lot
of fighting going on.
(Professor Rogers) It is also worth remembering that
it seems that quite significant elements of the paramilitary Al-Qaeda
network were actually in places like Florida, New Jersey and Germany.
There is this tendency to focus on Afghanistan as being the centre
of everything, that was significant, certainly, I think if one
assumes that the Taliban regime is eventually completely disintegrated,
if one assumes that the Al-Qaeda network is more or less destroyed
in relation to its facilities in Afghanistan that then this problem
goes away I think is really muddled thinking. There is a lot of
evidence that most of the Al-Qaeda operatives are no longer in
Afghanistan and probably many of them have left before 11 September.
It is astonishing how training camp after training camp has been
uncovered and bombed that there has been very little evidence
of casualties in and round those camps. This takes us back to
the point, if you look at from the point of view of the perpetrators
of 11 September an awful lot of this had already been thought
through.
Chairman
214. The commentators who were saying there
was no relationship between Al-Qaeda and terrorism are now having
to revise their views having seen the manuals. Those who are active
in America would have been forced to conclude to say that most
of the things the US has done so far have been correct rather
than incorrect. I think an argument could be made that even though
you are not going to bomb another capital or another country the
appearance of the USS Roosevelt somewhere offshore can concentrate
the mind wonderfully and result in countries, be they failed states
or not failed states, reaching fairly swift conclusion that harbouring
the remnants of Al-Qaeda is likely to damage their national health.
Is it the threat of force, even if the Americans do not use force.
I know James Cable who wrote Diplomacy died recently but
is there not a case for considering or giving the impression that
you want to use something even if you may not intend to use it?
(Sir Tim Garden) I think you are absolutely right
in that you can deter states, the thing I worry about is that
you do not deter suicidal terrorists. It is an important bit and
an important part of the operation in Afghanistan to say to a
number of other states, "your governments will not survive
if you harbour terrorists". That has meant that some of the
supporting activities become much more difficult for the terrorists,
so I think it is an important part of it.
215. States supporting terrorism if you cut
off their supply, if you cut off intelligence to them, if you
cut off the capabilities of your scientific community then it
is really difficult for the terrorist organisations to operate
in any territory and then much of your resources that were going
to be spent or might have been spent on your military are going
to be directed towards intelligence, towards your police service,
your customs, et cetera et cetera, and they will not have the
free run round London or other cities in the country that they
had and therefore the noose is tightening.
(Sir Tim Garden) I do not think I would be a definite
as that. I would say it has become more difficult. Particularly
in western society we have built ourselves big vulnerabilities
by the nature of the way we operate. This is not new. We used
to study it in the Cold War, we worried about the fact we had
highly vulnerable targets because of the nature of the society
we were. That has increased by orders of magnitude. That does
bring us back to asymmetric warfare, we have given ourselves vulnerabilities
which can be attacked relatively easily.
(Professor Rogers) Can I come back to a point you
raised, one way of looking at it so to say, was there a choice
of responses after 11 September. It is always difficult to divide
things into two possibilities but it can help to do this. Essentially
the United States decided almost immediately, and perhaps inevitably,
that what was required was a strong military response which would
be focussed on the Taliban regime and the Al-Qaeda network and
it has a fair amount of coalition support for that, it is strong
in Britain, it is much less strong in the rest of Europe, we do
have to remember that. The alternative that it could have taken,
but certainly did not take, would have been to take what you might
call the international law route, to build up a much stronger
coalition with very close and effective participation of a number
of regional countries to work out ways of bringing the network
to justice, even though it would take some years.
216. You cannot be serious, I know on paper
it sounds—
(Professor Rogers) Can I follow through, those essentially
are the two possibilities, one would involve military action as
soon as you were in a position to do it, another one involve an
alternative route. We have taken a military path and this I think
is likely to lead on in due course to further action against other
hot spots, Yemen and Somalia and almost certainly before too long
Iraq as well. I do know not know at the present time whether that
path is going to work in the longer term. If this Committee was
in session in 10 years' time that would be the time to look at
it. I do remember very clearly that people expected in 1991 that
the Gulf War problem was over and Saddam Hussain was finished
and that has not happened.
217. On the other hand you had people arguing,
including myself for a little while, certainly you argued, that
taking military action against the Falklands was rather stupid
and the same people argued that taking military action against
the Serbs in Bosnia was wrong in international law and Kosovo
was wrong. I do have sympathy with the argument you espoused,
you cannot seriously think that the second route that you outlined
was going to achieve anything. It might have made a nice seminar
somewhere but in terms of achievements and objectives I would
have thought the likelihood was zero, bearing in mind sanctions
have been applied against Afghanistan for a couple of years and
the United Nations resolution had been passed without the slightest
effect. Could you not admit, I do not want to force you into saying
something that you would not be prepared to say, military action,
backed up by humanitarian relief, diplomacy created this phenomenon
for you bringing about a reduction in nuclear warheads was the
right action, it might potentially have benefits, that are almost
incalculable. Of course it is risky but the alternative was even
riskier and the action that had been taken in the New York and
Washington might have been replicated else where—it might
still, I concede—it certainly would have taken place if
the Americans had proved to be supine after 11 September, as they
were after a number of earlier atrocities committed against them
and their personalism. I do not really think that the events of
last few weeks convinced a lot of people that second course of
action was just a fantasy for those who thought it might have
any effect on Al-Qaeda or any other terrorist organisation.
(Professor Rogers) With respect, on one issue I would
stand by my views on the Falklands War 20 years later, I think
that was a mistake and we are seeing more and more come out about
the onset of that war which suggests a degree of mistake, that
is another question. On this issue I put that alternative in all
seriousness, we are assuming that this path is the correct one.
All I would ask you to do is look back in five years time and
see whether it turns out to be the correct one. You should also
not dismiss the alternative possibility. You see, one of the terrible
dilemmas is that the United States had incredible support after
11 September, within Britain there is still strong support, but
there is nothing like as strong support for what is now happening
in Afghanistan and much of Middle East and southern Asia, we have
to face that. I am afraid I have to say that I am not convinced
that this path was the right path.
218. The number of demonstrations taking place
in Pakistan, Indonesia and in Europe have diminished, Greens supporting
the Chancellor and support for the military action in this country
is now 70 per cent. I am not saying the alliance is guaranteed
to survive in perpetuity but it is pretty incredible even for
the action that has been taken it remains as strong as it is.
I am less pessimistic than you that the whole thing is going to
fall apart.
(Sir Tim Garden) I wanted to associate myself with
your remarks, Chairman, if I can and disassociate myself for Paul's.
There is a third possible way of doing this, the Americans might
have on 12 September immediately done a massive attack on Afghanistan
and indeed people were talking about that in real seriousness.
They took a course which was a very difficult decision, particularly
difficult for the American political system, where they expect
not to be attacked on their homeland and they expect to be able
to counter those things. They waited and they took a very precise
and measured response. It is great for us to be able to sit and
write history five years later and say, if we had done this it
would have gone this way, there is no way of ever knowing whether
it would have gone that way, there might have been a succession
of major attacks until American did something massive. I think
in this particular case the Americans got it really right in terms
of the careful building up to it and what has been done. We can
all speculate about what may happen next but on their record so
far they seem to be doing it really rather well.
219. We have bunch of questions on international
aspect, I thought we have been talking about if you think there
has been a, before I get on to that, we are merging from what
are not international to International which I mean I cannot control
these people any more not that have been able to do so expect
absolutely anything would one o'clock be okay for you.
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