Examination of Witnesses (Questions 24-39)
SIR PAUL
LEVER KCMG, MR
CHARLES GRANT
AND DR
ROBERT DOVER
19 JUNE 2007
Q24 Chairman: Gentlemen, thank you very
much for coming to talk about the role of NATO. I ask you to introduce
yourselves and say a little about your organisations.
Sir Paul Lever: I am chairman
of the Royal United Services Institute. We are a defence and security
think-tank founded in 1831 by the Duke of Wellington in order
to give his young officers gainful employment in the study of
military science and stop them wasting their days in drinking
and dancing. We study defence and security in its broad context.
We are a British institute but we operate with an international
perspective. Before I retired from public service in 2003 I was
for 37 years a member of the British Diplomatic Service and virtually
all of that time I spent on European and politico-military issues.
Mr Grant: I am Charles Grant,
director of the Centre for European Reform, a small think-tank
that thinks about the future of the EU. I have done that for the
past 10 years. One of the things we think about is European defence.
Before setting up the think-tank in the early 1990s I had a spell
as defence editor of the Economist.
Dr Dover: I am a lecturer in defence
studies at King's College London. I am based at the Joint Services
Command and Staff College at the Defence Academy and for my considerable
sins I run the MA in defence studies which has on it 272 middle-ranking
military officers.
Q25 Chairman: You have been listening
to much of what we have been discussing this morning. We will
start with very similar questions. What do you see as the current
role and purpose of NATO? Is the Alliance still relevant? Does
it have a viable long-term future?
Sir Paul Lever: In my view, the
essential purpose of NATO remains what it always has been, that
is, to provide for the collective defence of its members and to
offer a forum in which they can discuss and, where appropriate,
take action on issues relevant to their common security. I add
one matter of a more general kind. I first became involved in
NATO in 1971 when I was appointed a very junior member of the
British delegation there. Even at that time NATO was agonising
about its future and purpose. Was it still relevant? It seems
to me that throughout its existence NATO has done so under varying
slogans, such as "adapt or die" and "out of area,
out of business". It always seems to be fearful that it is
losing its role, and yet without a doubt it has been one of the
most extraordinarily resilient and successful organisations, and
some would say it is the most successful military alliance ever.
It has retained public support within its members, and it still
does. It has been attractive to future members. People still wish
to join it. I just note the rather odd combination of apparent
continuing nervousness about being relevant and having a proper
role to play, coupled with extraordinarily durable success.
Mr Grant: I agree. It is a manifestation
of the transatlantic relationship, and one important political
function that it serves is to create a forum where Europeans and
Americans can talk together. It creates some political glue between
them, but what it does not do, and is unlikely to do, is to be
a body where there are true strategic discussions on common transatlantic
problems. That is what Mr de Hoop Scheffer and some figures in
the Bush Administration have been saying it should do, but I do
not believe that it is well designed to be a true forum where
people talk freely and frankly about key issues, maybe because
there are too many members. If there are 26 people around the
table it is impossible to have serious discussions. I do not think
that it will play that role, though some people think it should.
The defence diplomacy role that it plays is quite important in
reaching out to the central Asians and people who will never join
NATO but co-operate with it in certain ways. I include Russia
in that. The NATO-Russia Council was not a great success, but
it was not a great failure either. It creates a structure in which
if the situation in Russia improves useful co-operation between
that country and the West can be promoted.
Dr Dover: It probably should play
the role to which Mr Grant referred. I think that it ought to
play its historical role as it stands, but it should be bolder;
it ought to try to shape itself to become the pre-eminent institution
of choice for military operations that involve coalitions. It
should see itself as having a defence diplomacy role with those
countries on its periphery and around the world in trying to prevent
regional conflict, but it should also be a forum in which coalitions
of the willing are able to form and do the sorts of activities
that we might have seen in certain parts of Africa. I believe
that it should in essence perform its historical role but try
to be bolder.
Q26 Chairman: None of you has mentioned
the issue of the command structure or force for unifying standards,
procurement and weapons. Is that because it is too low down the
food chain for the grand question that I have asked?
Dr Dover: I would come to procurement
as a second order question. I certainly believe that the question
of procurement is a piece of work that the Alliance and the European
Union and its Member States need to do as a matter of priority.
As I put in my written evidence, if we continue to procure very
high technology pieces of equipment the Pugh curve, which indicates
that defence inflation will see a degradation of capability over
time, means that we will have to think differently about how we
do procurement.
Q27 Chairman: We thank you for your
written evidence which is very helpful.
Dr Dover: Whilst the EU has the
European Defence Agency which is meant to plug the gaps in European
capabilities NATO does not have exactly the same thing. Given
the presence of the latent defence industrial capability of the
United States, that seems to me to be an obvious missed opportunity.
Q28 Willie Rennie: Mr Grant, you
said there was no real forum within NATO to have those discussions
about strategy. Does that mean that we do not have a common understanding
about the threats and challenges that face NATO?
Mr Grant: There is some strategic
divergence between Europeans and Americans on how to approach
security challenges. Many Europeans, the British less than some,
always tend to prefer diplomatic solutions to security problems,
whilst Americans are naturally more willing to think about the
use of force. In a sense, one thing the Alliance does is try to
get a composition. For now at least we have a common position
on Iran and Afghanistan, so we work quite well together on those
two problems, but we have fundamentally different starting points.
The British are half-way between some Europeans and the Americans
on that.
Q29 Willie Rennie: But that is more
about what you do with the threats and challenges rather than
what they are. My question is about whether there is a difference
of opinion or a common understanding about the threats and challenges
rather than what is to be done about them.
Mr Grant: I think there is a pretty
good convergence of analysis. My point is that we may disagree
about what we do about them. The Germans always want to negotiate
that bit longer than the rest of us, but, analysing the threats,
at the moment I do not see a significant difference between Europeans
and Americans on the key security threats.
Q30 Willie Rennie: Therefore, the
lack of a forum for discussion does not hinder that common understanding?
Mr Grant: Not too much. There
was a forum for discussion, of which Sir Paul was probably a part.
I refer to the so-called Quad meetings involving Americans, Germans,
Brits and French. Those were informal meetings before the formal
NATO body met. That was quite a useful steering group for the
big boys. That fell into disarray in recent years, perhaps because
of French-American tensions, and it may be that something like
that needs to be revived. I agree with Dr Dover, Mr de Hoop Scheffer
and others who say that it would be great if there were strategic
discussions in NATO. I am not opposed to them; I just question
whether it is practical to have useful high-level discussions
when there are 26 people around the table.
Q31 Willie Rennie: Can you also say
what you believe to be the threats and challenges?
Sir Paul Lever: In the days when
the principal strategic issue facing the North Atlantic Alliance
was the Soviet Union and how to deal with it, sustain a credible
defence against it and engage with it NATO was the principal forum
for strategic dialogue because the dialogue was about things that
might happen on the territory of its members. What has changed
since then is the nature of the strategic threat, or the strategic
environment. The concerns of most governments now relate to terrorism,
the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and, going beyond
that, issues such as failed states, instability, energy security
and so on. These matters lend themselves less well to a single
point of consultation. There is probably more diversity of views
on them. The sheer difference in scale, size and power between
America on the one hand and its allies on the other has made consultation
in the traditional sense, ie a commitment to finding a single
point of view and acting on it, much more difficult.
Dr Dover: In terms of the threats
faced by the Alliance and the EU, one does not need to go much
further than the European Security Strategy document issued in
2003 which dealt with terrorism and failed states, weapons of
mass destruction, proliferation and environmental matters. I would
add to that mass migration as a subset. As a footnote, I disagree
with Mr Wolf about not facing a mass influx of migrants from sub-Saharan
Africa because I think that is likely if the environment in Africa
becomes appreciably hotter. I think there is a common understanding
between all of the NATO parties on what faces the world in terms
of international security. The real debate is about how to process
those threats. As one can see from dealing with just the Middle
East, the idea that there has been blow-back within this country
from foreign policy activities in that part of the world has not
been fronted by America because of a very different demographic.
It is a matter of the process rather than the understanding. Even
without a common forum to discuss strategy in relation to these
massive issues it is the putting into operation of that analysis
that is really key.
Q32 Mr Jenkin: The strategic concept
of NATO predates 9/11; it was agreed at the Washington summit
in 1999. Is it time to update that concept? Would that be a meaningful
process, and would NATO be capable of agreeing a new strategic
concept?
Sir Paul Lever: Logically, for
the reasons you give, yes. At this time a document drafted in
1999, albeit complemented by political guidance issued last November
or December, is, given 9/11, out of date. I would start with the
question: are the mega-documents and strategic concepts produced
by NATO quite regularly over the years seminal tools in enhancing
our security or, like many communiqués flowing from international
organisations, are they things that are arrived at and adopted
and then disappear into the archives? My experience is that it
is easy to laugh at them but they serve a role, which is to engage
all the members of the organisation, in this case all 26, in the
process of common thought, analysis and to some degree, at a very
general level, policy-making. That has a virtue of its own particularly
for the smaller countries because, without intending to sound
patronising, it helps to bind them in, but I am not quite sure
whether a further draft of the strategic concept will yield penetrating
new insights or innovative solutions. It is right that 9/11 was
a seminal moment. It has focused attention on the issue of terrorism,
but terrorism is a very broad subject in relation to which the
possible application of military force, which is NATO's speciality,
can at best play only a modest role.
Q33 Mr Jenkin: Is there any dissenting
opinion?
Dr Dover: The changing of documentation
is a chicken-and-egg question. Does one need agreement first or
does it lead to agreement? If it does not result in a change of
doctrine then the dangers in division possibly outweigh the benefits
of having a nice shiny brochure that we can hawk round all 26
countries. Therefore, I dissent inasmuch as it probably is unnecessary
and may be divisive.
Mr Grant: I do not want to add
anything to that question, but I should like to respond, perhaps
not now, to an earlier point raised by the Chairman on the defence
industry.
Q34 Mr Jenkin: I think we will come
to that later. Perhaps I may posit the suggestion that, looking
at the success of NATO from the 1960s onwards, the Harmel report
which was generated by strategic and military thinkers became
the strategic concept. Rather than politicians trying to agree
a top-down process, it was a bottom-up process. Would not NATO
be better advised to pursue a process of that nature with regard
to terrorist threats and other threats?
Sir Paul Lever: You are right
that that was a key document because it established as collective
policy the twin approaches of defence on the one hand and détente—an
expression which I believe first emerged from the Harmel report—on
the other. It is possible that in relation to terrorism some new
concept could emerge that caught the public imagination and would
be something around which everyone rallied. I am slightly sceptical
because I think that dealing with terrorism requires such a range
of policy instruments, because the nature of the terrorist threat
which members of the Alliance face is not the same. For the United
States terrorism is a problem to be dealt with out there before
it gets to America; for us, sadly, terrorism is increasingly a
problem from within our own society. For some other members of
the Alliance it is a problem which really affects other people
but is not perceived as necessarily affecting them.
Dr Dover: I believe that is right.
I think that changes should come from the hard-thinking half-colonel
rather than from the top down.
Q35 Mr Holloway: Sir Paul, could
a gap open up within NATO between those who face terrorism internally
and those who do not?
Sir Paul Lever: A gap in what
sense?
Q36 Mr Holloway: I refer to a political
gap. If there was a major terrorist attack and things changed
clearly the interests of countries that faced terrorism internally
would be different from those that did not.
Sir Paul Lever: You could say
that is the case at the moment. There are some countries in Europe
for whom fortunately terrorism has not been a problem on their
own territory, but it has not affected their general solidarity
with the international effort to combat terrorism.
Q37 Mr Holloway: But their minds
may not have been concentrated yet.
Mr Grant: There are one or two
examples of slight tensions amongst Europeans in this area. When
the EU was introducing a directive on data retention on telephone
calls, which is a very useful tool in the fight against terrorism,
the Swedes, who do not face much of a terrorist threat and care
about civil liberties, were at one end of the extreme in opposing
the compulsory retention of such information. There are tensions
amongst Europeans which one sees. One matter that NATO and the
EU can perhaps do in counter-terrorism is simply to exchange best
practice. Europe has weak links in its efforts to fight terrorism
because the smaller EU countries do not have very sophisticated
intelligence services and are not very well equipped to deal with
al-Qaeda or somebody else. If I was al-Qaeda I would set up in
some of the smaller Member States where the intelligence and counter-terrorism
operations are not very sophisticated. NATO can do quite a lot
to facilitate the exchange of best practice in how to deal with
terrorism.
Q38 Linda Gilroy: Has there been
any lasting damage to the Alliance caused by the disputes over
the Iraq war?
Dr Dover: There probably has,
but I counter that with the suggestion, which is almost counter-intuitive,
that that is why I think the Alliance should now act to regain
some confidence that maybe it has lost. Therefore, it should mortgage
its confidence to try to come together to be that pre-eminent
institution for coalitions of the willing. I believe that Afghanistan
and Iraq were in a particular time and space politically and from
the perspective of international security. The sorts of conflicts
in which the West will become involved in future are essentially
counter-insurgencies or interventions in failing or failed states.
Therefore, to have NATO as a strong part of the international
system is very important to deal with those matters. My answer
is that it has affected NATO but the follow-on point is that the
Alliance has to get over that schism to find its feet.
Mr Grant: I believe that it has
inflicted long-term damage, particularly the impact on public
opinion. One of the problems that the Alliance now faces is that
anti-Americanism has progressed and become a more powerful force
in several European countries. Obviously, it is hard to distinguish
between anti-Bushism and anti-Americanism. They are different
phenomena but related. I think that at the level of leadership
there is a strong effort to put Iraq behind us, and I believe
that Merkel and Sarkozy are the two best leaders that we can hope
for in Germany and France to try to repair the damage, some of
the blame for which, though obviously not all, was due to Chirac
and Schroder. They are well placed to try to repair that damage,
but they are constrained in what they can do and say by their
public opinions. In particular, in Germany, which Sir Paul knows
much better than I, public opinion is very strongly anti-American.
We saw this recently when Putin very cleverly earlier this year
re-ignited the divisions of the Iraq war with his opposition to
America's plan to install missile defence systems in the Czech
Republic and Poland. Extraordinarily, he complained about it and
his top general threatened to point nuclear weapons at those two
countries, and then the German foreign minister said it was all
America's fault and not Russia's. Since then Putin has gone over
the top and created quite a lot of solidarity among Europeans.
In the past month he went completely over the top. But these divisions
are there and can be revived by clever tactics such as those deployed
by Putin earlier this year.
Sir Paul Lever: Things come and
go. Of course, when on a big international issue like Iraq there
is a clear divergence of opinion within the North Atlantic Alliance
it is not good for its solidarity and cohesion, but there have
been differences of view in the past, for example in relation
to Vietnam and certainly Suez. It is true that the general mood
in Europe is less friendly towards the United States than it traditionally
has been. That does not apply just to Germany but in our country
too according to the opinion polls, but moods change quickly.
Immediately after 9/11 the biggest demonstration of public support
for the United States in the world took place outside the Brandenburg
Gate in Berlin. There was massive sympathy in Europe everywhere
for the Americans after what had happened. In my view, it remains
to be seen how things go in the United States. If you look at
the public mood there, we may have a successor to George Bush
who will take a rather different view on Iraq. There may even
be people in the United States, though I am sure they will never
say it publicly, who think that, sadly, the French and Germans
were right about Iraq. Much will depend on how policy develops
in America and what attitude the United States has both to Iraq
and its need for allies.
Q39 Mr Hamilton: Following up your
comments about whether America and Europe share a common purpose
on the threats that they face, is there enough there so we can
have a joint purpose between America and Europe?
Sir Paul Lever: I see no reason
why we cannot, but we have to be realistic about the difference
in power between America on the one hand and its European allies
on the other. I go back to the days of the cold war. When we were
dealing with a direct common threat of that kind common policy-making,
including policy-making which had to be based on consensus, was
possible despite America's predominance. It is much less easy
to do it today. Even a more benign American administration which
took the need for allies much more seriously would not want to
be completely hemmed in by having to obtain the consensus of all
its NATO allies to a policy or military action. It is not realistic
to imagine that we can go back to those days. There are common
interests and similar perceptions, but we have to be realistic
about the scale of American power and the desire that any US president
will have to retain flexibility over how that power should be
deployed.
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