UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 1100-i

HOUSE OF COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE THE

FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

 

GLOBAL SECURITY: UK-US RELATIONS

 

WEDNESDAY 11 NOVEMBER 2009

 

DR. DANA ALLIN, DR. DAVID H. DUNN and DR. ROBIN NIBLETT

PROFESSOR MALCOLM CHALMERS and LORD WALLACE OF SALTAIRE

 

Evidence heard in Public

Questions 1 - 45

 

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

1.	This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others.
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4.	Prospective witnesses may receive this in preparation for any written or oral evidence they may in due course give to the Committee.

 

 

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Foreign Affairs Committee

on Wednesday 11 November 2009

Members present:

Mike Gapes (Chairman)

Sir Menzies Campbell

Mr. David Heathcoat-Amory

Mr. John Horam

Mr. Eric Illsley

Andrew Mackinlay

Mr. Malcolm Moss

Sir John Stanley

Ms Gisela Stuart

 

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Dr. Dana Allin, Senior Fellow, International Institute for Strategic Studies, Dr. David H. Dunn, Reader in International Politics, University of Birmingham, and Dr. Robin Niblett, Director, Chatham House, gave evidence.

 

Q1 Chairman: This afternoon, we are taking evidence in our inquiry on global security: UK-US relations. Gentlemen, thank you for coming. Can we begin for the record with a brief introduction from each of you as to who you are and what you do?

Dr. Niblett: I am Robin Niblett, Director of Chatham House. I took over at the beginning of 2007. Prior to that, I spent 10 years in Washington working at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Dr. Allin: I am Dana Allin, Senior Fellow for US Foreign Policy and Transatlantic Affairs at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, where I have been for close to 12 years. I am also editor of our journal, Survival.

Dr. Dunn: I am David Dunn. I lecture at the University of Birmingham in Euro Foreign and Security Policy and Diplomacy. I have been at Birmingham for 18 years. Before that, I taught at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. I have also spent a lot of time in Washington, as a NATO Fellow and a Fulbright Fellow.

 

Q2 Chairman: May I ask you to look back? What is the legacy for current UK-US relations of the previous relationship between our former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and the United States leadership at the time?

Dr. Niblett: I suppose that the legacy is a very close military engagement in Afghanistan-and, obviously, emerging from Iraq-so a level of military intimacy and shared experiences of suffering and some successes is an important backdrop to the overall relationship. I also think that the legacy is the failure of the idea of Britain as a bridge between Europe and America. We have closeness on the military side, but we have paid somewhat of a price in some of the objectives that Tony Blair had laid out for himself and the country at the time. I shall stop there, having given a couple of first ideas.

Chairman: We will pursue that in a little while. I call on your colleagues.

Dr. Allin: I agree. On balance, it is a positive, none the less complicated legacy. It is very positive in the sense that, obviously the close emotional-I say this not pejoratively-moralistic relationship between Prime Minister Blair and President Bush was important in the way that the decisions to go to war were presented. Prime Minister Blair was a bridge. He had a close relationship with Bill Clinton, so he was a bridge from one ideological camp to another. He is much admired on the left in the United States as well as on the right. I should say centre left and centre right. At the end of the day, the central project in the minds of many Americans was discredited-the Iraq war. It is good to be close, but it is also good to be right.

Dr. Dunn: I think that the legacy is very complicated. I offer the distinction between the legacy and policy, and the immediate legacy and perception. On policy terms, Blair put Atlantic relations on a very strong footing in many respects with his initiative on ESDP at St. Malo and his role in the Kosovo war in 1999. The joint operations in Iraq and Afghanistan put the relationship on a stronger footing bilaterally than had been the case previously, and that was true of his relationship with both Clinton and Bush.

The perceptions are different on both sides of the Atlantic. If we talk to most Americans, they think that Tony Blair is fantastic. Even though many people were opposed to the war or have looked at it negatively since then, they value the fact that Britain was an ally in that war. Most people in America supported the war at the time, therefore the perceptions of America about the bilateral relationship as far as the Blair legacy is concerned is entirely positive.

The special relationship or the UK-US relationship more broadly is primarily coming from here. By and large, our perceptions as a country are very different on whether we benefited from it. Americans look at you puzzled when you ask, "What about UK-US relations?" They say, "What do you mean? What is the problem? They are fantastic." Here, it is a different story.

 

Q3 Chairman: Can I pursue the question of the bridge? It is shorthand. Dr. Niblett, you said that it had not succeeded. Will you enlarge on that?

Dr. Niblett: In practical terms, it failed the most critical test, which was over the decision to go to war in Iraq. So the ability of Britain to be able to pull together where the United States was going with its decisions on that conflict and where certainly some-not all-the other major European countries such as France and Germany, in particular, were going was not successful.

More importantly, the closeness that Tony Blair struck up with the United States and the Bush Administration, particularly in the post-9/11 context, and buying into the idea of a global war on terrorism, was not shared largely in other European capitals. The ability for Britain to say, "We can represent a European view to Washington. We can deliver European policy positions to Washington. We can interpret Washington back to Europe and perhaps modify somewhat the US position as a result of our influence" was the central active concept of a bridge. There is no point is being a bridge if you are not trying to do something with it, but it struck me as not having succeeded.

Dr. Allin: I agree entirely, and I assume that later we will be discussing aspects of the European-UK-US relationship. One reason that it failed was that there was a determination on the part of the US Administration to define this as a zero-sum competition because of French, German and other European opposition to the war. That was a conscious choice. It was not necessary to create loyalty to this war. There are examples from the Vietnam war, to which there was strong opposition throughout much of Europe, and the US Administration decided not to make it a test of alliance and solidarity. But it was posed as a test of alliance and solidarity, and, according to the terms of the test, Britain passed and other European countries did not. That was a short-term tactical gain for Britain, if you want to look at it in those terms, and the residue that it left was not positive. Now we have an Administration led by a President who thought that the war was a mistake. I won't say that things have been up and down, but, on balance, the American position since World War Two has been to value the relationship with Britain for many things, not least its ability to be a bridge to continental Europe.

Chairman: Dr. Dunn, do you want to add anything?

Dr. Dunn: Yes indeed. The bridge is the metaphor: Britain can deliver Washington to Brussels and Brussels to Washington, as a link between the two, and the Iraq war is the example of how that policy failed. It failed partly because of the expectations set upon it. Britain did influence American foreign policy-Resolution 1441 was partly a consequence of British policy pushing the American Administration towards the diplomatic route. The action was put off as long as possible within the confines of the weather envelope, at British insistence. Other things were added to the policy, at British insistence, such as some of the effort towards a Middle Eastern peace process. In terms of the capacity to totally change American foreign policy, when all of Washington had a consensus on going to war as part of its grand strategy, that is a big ask for British foreign policy. The question is partly one of expectations.

I would also set the matter in context. British foreign policy failed, but so did most of the transatlantic relations. Germany's relationship with America failed fundamentally for the first time in the post-war period. France's relationship failed fundamentally as a consequence of its lack of influence. Sure, British foreign policy failed in terms of the bridge doing the job that it was supposed to do, but the context was one of total failure.

Dr. Niblett: There is this idea that Britain could get something out of playing this mediating role, but personally I don't believe that was the main reason why Prime Minister Blair went for what he did-it was not to get something in return. But that was part of the narrative given to some of the European capitals, and this is where the Middle East peace process in particular was held up, as that would be the next step. This would be part of a bigger strategy for the Middle East. That is an area that definitely failed. We were not able to deliver that.

 

Q4 Chairman: We will come on to those issues later. Can I take you back to the question of personalities? Tony Blair ceased to be Prime Minister in mid-2007; then we had one and a half years of Gordon Brown, as the new Prime Minister, having to deal still with President Bush, both before and, for a period, after the presidential election; and now we have the Obama Administration, which we will come on to in a moment. In what ways was Gordon Brown's approach to the US different from that of Tony Blair? Did it have any positive or negative consequences?

Dr. Dunn: I had a journal article in Chatham House's "International Affairs" which addressed that precise question, and I argued in that piece that the Brown Administration had sent a variety of very clear signals to the Bush Administration as an attempt to draw a line under the Blair Administration's approach to Washington and to create distance, and Washington was very clear in picking up those signals. Consequently, despite the substantive aspects of British and American co-operation in a whole variety of areas in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush Administration looked for other interlocutors in Europe, particularly the new Administrations of Angela Merkel in Germany and of Sarkozy in France, who have filled the vacuum resulting from the decision by the Brown Administration to create distance.

Dr. Allin: I don't want to quarrel with the need or the fact of trying to signal distance, but if that was the case, the signals were fairly subtle, as they would have to be, given the fact that the Brown Government did not want, or could not want, a real breach. If I have a slight question about this, it is with the cause and effect. In the other three capitals-Washington, Paris and Berlin-there was a sense that they had looked into the abyss of the end of their transatlantic relations, and they did not like what they saw. There was a real effort in all three capitals to repair relations-that included the Bush Administration, too. It is possible that that was enabled by a slightly colder relationship with Britain, but I would not look at that in zero sum terms.

Dr. Niblett: I think I agree with David. From a political standpoint, it struck me-I had been back in London for six months when this happened-that Prime Minister Brown felt that he had to demonstrate a level of separation and a difference of approach in his first trip to meet President Bush. I thought that the body signals were pretty clear of the awkwardness there. The problem was that there was a schizophrenia: in the first six months, we had a distancing or standing apart, but when the new leaderships came in in France and Germany and made an effort, as Dana said, to rebuild somewhat relationships with a much more open, second-term George W. Bush, suddenly Prime Minister Brown went back and talked about this being the closest relationship and one of the most special relationships. There was a sense of "Oh gosh, now we're going to be pushed aside, so we have to compete our way back in." I don't think that it looked particularly good, and we had the hangover at the time of the Basra period. What a lot of people in America remember of their Iraq period is British forces drawing down, and maybe some sense of a loss of commitment. I do not necessarily think that that is necessarily justified in terms of what physically happened, but the impression left towards the end of that period of the Bush Administration was of a UK that was not as reliable.

 

Q5 Chairman: You are referring to Senator John McCain and others who made critical remarks at that time?

Dr. Niblett: And a huge number of articles written around then in the newspapers and journals about Britain not being as reliable an ally in that period.

Chairman: Thank you. We shall move on to questions from John Horam.

 

Q6Mr. Horam: Coming on to the special relationship and the view about that from both sides of the Atlantic, Dr. Niblett, you said in your written evidence to the Committee, which I read with great interest, that "the gap between aspiration and reality, however, is becoming ever more awkward." Would you elaborate on that for the verbal record?

Dr. Niblett: Yes, and I think that that was almost my concluding statement, so I would have to pull in a number of points, but I do not want to take up all the witness time.

On the aspiration, it strikes me that from a British standpoint we are trying to do two things. We are trying to send a signal that we have a special relationship. We pass up no effort, diplomatically and almost in a public relations way, to try to demonstrate that it is there. We look for signals, we look for language-we almost demand the return in terms of comments from the Obama Administration. We also have to aspire to it, because in the end what the US does is enormously important to what we want to achieve in our own foreign policy. There is therefore both a PR dimension, which as you know from my testimony, I am critical of, and there is a reality that America is very important, which I have to accept, and which I don't dispute. From a US standpoint, however, we, as I said in my testimony, were very important in certain tactical areas-intelligence, military co-operation and nuclear; and we're very important in the context of Afghanistan and Pakistan. I don't mean to get too far ahead in where you're going in the testimony, but the reality is that the US has many other things on its plate, in which we are not critical, but they are now critical for the United States. They include the G20 world as I call it, the rise of China, the rise of India, how to handle Russia, etc. Therefore, we have to recognise that the United States cannot be expected to keep coming over and calling us the most special relationship, as Secretary of State Clinton most recently had to do and as President Obama had to do on the margins of the UN General Assembly. They have a bigger and busier plate, and one that we are not constantly involved in in this G20 world. That would be the essence of what I meant by aspirational reality. It is a changed US reality, but it is almost harking back to an old UK aspiration.

 

Q7 Mr. Horam: Following that up, another comment that we had, which is about the British approach to the relationship, from Professor Michael Clarke of the Royal United Services Institute, which you will be aware of, slightly echoes what you have just said. "British leaders should be wary of falling into a cosy bilateralism with US Presidents, attractive as that can seem, if it ultimately undermines multilateral approaches to global security challenges." Then he said, "At a practical level the UK can further its interests by visibly taking a long term lead in making European approaches to regional global security". I don't want to come to the Lisbon treaty, which we are asking about later, but he specifically said that "the essential triangular relationship between Paris, Berlin and London" is where we should make our effort, as opposed to carrying on with saying all the things that we do say about the special relationship.

Dr. Niblett: I am cautious, personally, about inferring from the difficulty of being a bridge and the realities of how I think the US-UK relationship has changed, which I believe it has, that we automatically have to expect a clear and constant position between Paris, Berlin and London on the big security challenges. I don't think that A equals B. Think of some of the big questions, although on Iran we are working very well. That is the three plus the United States, so it is not that we've had to separate ourselves from the United States. Actually, as a foursome, plus others, we're working as effectively as is possible in a very difficult situation. But if you take Russia, for example, I don't see Britain, France and Germany necessarily being completely of the same view on how to deal with Russia.

 

Q8 Mr. Horam: Why not? Why do you see a difference on Russia?

Dr. Niblett: I happen to believe, as again I think I say in my written testimony, that Russia is a place about which the United States has quite a different view from many of its European partners. That doesn't necessarily mean that we, as European partners, have the same view-in particular, Germany's energy and trading relationship with Russia puts it in a very different thinking and strategic context from that of France, which does not depend nearly as much on Russia for fuel, given its reliance on nuclear energy for the bulk of its electricity production. The UK is in a shift from being an exporter of energy to starting to become an importer and therefore having to think differently about its relationship, but it has a much more unique bilateral relationship, as you all know, because of our hosting various people who are not particularly popular in Moscow. That has led to all sorts of complexities in our relationship. I am concerned that there are some differences in opinion, but cut right down to the national interest perspectives of France, Germany and Britain, and we have not worked our way through them yet. I would strongly encourage greater European co-operation on energy security, but we can't simply assume that it is going to be an easy shift to make from co-ordinating with the US in this area.

 

Q9 Mr. Horam: I would like Dr. Allin to come in on this one, but on a second point about some evidence that we had from Lord Hurd. He said that Tony Blair never learnt the art of being a junior partner to the US and confused it with subservience. In handling the relationship, do you think that's a correct comment?

Dr. Allin: I think it was an inherently problematic relationship, when you go to war in opposition to much of European public opinion and important European countries. Whether I would characterise it as a subservient relationship, I am not sure. There was clearly a senior partner in the relationship for reasons that are understandable.

 

Q10 Mr. Horam: He is saying that Mrs. Thatcher, for example, and Churchill in wartime understood the relationship of the junior partner, whereas Tony Blair did not understand it, and allowed it to slide into subservience.

Dr. Allin: I am not trying to avoid the question. His basic position was clearly very pro-war. He did not choose to go to war because it was what the United States wanted. That was not my impression. Given his basic position, I am not sure how he would have avoided that image.

 

Q11 Mr. Horam: We would not have been there though if America had not been there, would we?

Dr. Allin: No. That is absolutely the case. We could discuss the same thing in terms of Afghanistan.

When we speak about the Iranian problem, clearly the United States values Britain above all as a member of the three. There are areas of obvious disagreement with continental Europe, but it is a perfect example of how Britain at the heart of Europe is seen as being in America's interest. The original question was about whether Britain sees too much in this relationship for the relationship, in a sense, to bear-if I understood it correctly. There is something to that. Given the silly spasms of press coverage about how many minutes or the missing bilateral meaning and so forth, there are more serious things to which the British press could devote itself and more serious problems, particularly when the very next day we saw the importance of Britain in Pittsburgh dealing with the Iranian file.

Part of the big problem is personalising too much. What is new with Barack Obama is not that he does not like Prime Minister Brown, but that he is not sentimental in his relations with any of Europe's leaders. It is interesting that you have the situation in which relations with Europe are unquestionably better. When I say "with Europe", I include the UK, but personal relations between the President of the United States and the Chancellor of Germany, the President of France and the Prime Minister of Britain are not the same. That is not a particularly significant factor. If you invest too much work and too many expectations in the personal relationship, you will simply be hostage to the personality of the American President.

Dr. Dunn: I concur with the previous comments. The degree to which the press fixate over this is reminiscent of Snow White saying "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is fairest of them all?"

Going back to your previous question about whether there was a choice to be made between a special relationship with Washington or a closer relationship with Paris and Berlin, it does not need to be that stark a choice. It is not a zero sum game. It is not like a marriage. It is not monogamous. That is not required. America has special relationships with many powers, such as Israel and Japan, and, indeed, China in some respects. We can have special relationships with our closest allies, whether in Europe or America. One does not preclude the other.

 

Q12 Sir John Stanley: Do you think that the present US Administration have made up their mind as to whether it is more in their interests that Europe becomes more integrated and speaks more with one voice-the downside from their point of view is that that could produce a more powerful Europe and possibly a more anti-American Europe-or is it more comfortable with a Europe that is less integrated and which preserves the particular relationship it has with the UK?

Dr. Allin: I think that they want to see a more integrated Europe. The evidence for that will unfold. I base that mainly on my personal knowledge and relationships with people in the Administration who have a long-standing view that we do not have to fear an anti-American basis to European integration. As I said in answer to an earlier question, the kind of divide and conquer strategy that you saw during the Bush Administration has been discredited. That was one of the things that Barack Obama ran against when he ran for President.

Dr. Dunn: Indeed. I think that every signal that I get from Washington-I have just come back from there-shows that the Americans would like to see a more united, and expect a more united, Europe than we have, but, primarily, they want a more engaged, more capable and more involved Europe. In a sense, they see those two things as linked. The integration process will enable Europe to be more of an engaged actor than it is. There is a huge frustration that the division of Europe leads to the incapacity of Europe to act with one voice, one policy or any capability on the international stage.

Dr. Niblett: I entirely agree with both the previous points and, as you say, we all have personal experiences. I remember working at CSIS, where we ended up doing a project, in which people who are currently in the Administration are involved, pushing for European defence integration. They actually chaired and pushed the project, as Americans, on behalf of deeper European defence integration, which I find quite fascinating. I do not think that they see it as a threat, they do not assume that it will be anti-American and, certainly because of who they see themselves as-the Obama Administration-they do not see this as being a kind of zero-sum relationship.

This is very important in terms of where the UK ends up because there was a value to the UK, certainly historically-I would even say going back a bit-of being a potential guard against too much integration, and that was an important role that it played within the "special relationship". That aspect of the relationship and that role for Britain as a guardian against deeper integration is not what is needed. It is not important any more.

One comment that I would make is that one thing that I suppose gets my back up a little bit at the moment is when I hear about US frustration. This has been reported in the press and comments have been made by the Assistant Secretary of State for Europe about yellow lights and frustration with Europeans for not giving enough and not being organised enough. On Afghanistan there are clearly deep differences among European Governments about how central and important that conflict is. It is deeply important to us, as Brits, and to one or two other European Governments, but it is not seen that way by others, so it is a matter of choice that we are not organised or engaged. It is not because European integration is failing in some particular way, it is a very clear political decision by some not to be engaged.

On the other hand, I can see European leaders say, and I have heard them say, "Look we're pretty organised on climate change, we've been very organised on dealing with the global financial crisis and we've got some pretty clear views on trade issues, so we are organised. We just don't happen to be organised, because we don't want to be, on the one issue that is deeply important to you." And we are organised-more than we were-on Iran. There is a dialogue of the deaf going on. There is a search for greater co-ordination by aspects of the US Administration on something that is deeply important to them, but there are things that are important to European Governments, where they feel that they are organised, on which they are not getting a very clear answer from the US-climate change being the absolute case in point in the lead up to Copenhagen.

Dr. Dunn: Can I make a couple of follow ups on that? One is that the expectation is that if we were more integrated, and had implemented Lisbon for example, we would actually get a common position together on Afghanistan, and, therefore, would be a more effective interlocutor as a consequence. So there is an expectation in the frustration about where things would go.

Dr. Niblett: Which is not true.

Dr. Dunn: Which is not true. America must understand the implications of Lisbon and of European integration more broadly. On just one other point-the defence integration aspect-just now the European Union as a whole spends about 60% of what America spends on defence and yet has a capability to deploy forces of about 5% to 10%. We get very bad value for money through a fragmented European defence spend and the Americans would like to see us move away from that.

Dr. Allin: May I comment very briefly? I thought that Dr. Niblett touched on a fascinating comparison when he referred to climate change. The standard criticism of Europe is that in its very nature it is incoherent and cannot get anything done. Here we have an example where Europe, by its nature, is able to do a lot on climate change and the United States, because of our 18th century system of bicameral legislature, may well be prevented from doing it by about six senators representing 12% of the US population.

 

Q13 Ms Stuart: Let us explore this in the context of the special relationship a little bit more. I was struck by the earlier debate about the bridge. The comparison came to me that we keep looking at Turkey as being our bridge into Asia. Turkey says, "We don't want to be a bridge into Asia. Please don't put that on us." Is there a danger here? I have no evidence that Blair ever said, "I will be your bridge to Europe," in that he meant that he really could deliver that. He thought that he would be the bridge that links two positions, but if he ever thought that he could deliver Europe to the Americans he deluded himself. He could say that he was the halfway house between the Europeans-us-and then get to you.

My take on that term "special relationship" is that when we were in the UN the American ambassador to the UN was quite clear that the Americans regard the UN as a useful vehicle in as much as it delivers US national interests. Is our special relationship with the US the same? We have a special relationship; they have a special relationship with us in as much as we can help them deliver their national interests and if we don't then there isn't a special relationship.

Dr. Niblett: That is a tough question.

Dr. Allin: It is. The negative answer that you are driving at is true, but it is not so sinister. Countries are in a business. In a sense they have an obligation to seek their national interests. That is what the US finds and one avenue of that is the relationship with Britain. Maybe I would turn it around. Clearly when one speaks of a special relationship-I'm not sure we want to get into an historical, philosophical discussion here. I am not crazy about the term to be frank, because it is an artefact-

 

Q14 Ms Stuart: What would you call it then?

Dr. Allin: For one thing it is a treaty alliance. We are part of a treaty alliance, so we are allies. My only objection to it is that it is an artefact-a coinage-right after world war two, or right at the end of it, and now it has almost become a fetish to fill it out. In a certain sense it does more harm than good. Having said that, there are clearly sinews of it that are not based on mechanical relations between states. They are so obvious that it is almost embarrassing to mention them: language, culture and shared history. All of this is valuable and seen as valuable in the United States. The problem is when it is-these are bad words to choose-described in almost quasi-racialist terms as an alliance of the English-speaking peoples implicitly against the inferior rest of the world. Sometimes a concentration on it almost has those terms.

Dr. Dunn: I think the relationship we talked about earlier in terms of the way in which the press fetishise about the term "special relationship" can be problematic. But there is value in the discursive act of describing something as a special relationship as a rhetorical device. In a sense by discussing it and describing it as such it consequently has a meaning in a wider sense. We get a special warmer feeling from the relationship as a consequence of describing it in those terms. In a subliminal way it can be beneficial, although it can be frustrating for academics trying to pin it down. That is the first point.

There is a wider point at which the whole variety of the lineage of our common histories, approaches and linguistics and stuff-what Obama called the kinship of ideals, at one level-gives us that automatic plug-in, which is a special term. Then, of course, there is the way in which at a functional level in defence, intelligence and diplomacy we are linked in. There is an operationalised aspect of the relationship where it does work hand in glove in a way that is unusual. It is unusual for two states to work as closely together as is the case and has been established and institutionalised over time. As for national interests, there is a degree to which America uses its relations with Britain on occasion to get us to draft a resolution or to be there, to broaden the issue out and make it appear that it is not just America doing things but that there is a multinational aspect. But the reverse is also true. I asked at the British Embassy in Washington, "What do you see as your main mission?" They said, "Our main mission is to deliver American power to British interests." It plays both ways. When the UK is asked to draft a UN resolution, we get to put our language, expertise, values and interests in, as a consequence of being the custodian of the English language. That is a phrase used when they ask us to draft something because we are better at English than they are. We derive benefit from them.

Dr. Niblett: I agree with the points made. A special relationship in today's world cannot have the uniqueness that we in Britain expect. It is still special-we have all agreed on that and certainly I wrote that in my testimony-in some specific areas in particular where it is unique. That is what special has almost come to mean. We wish it was unique; it is not unique, it is special. But where it is special-and it is likely to be a very important area for the next 10 to 20 years-where we can help each other, is on counter-terrorism and that complex aspect of security that requires a sharing of information and intelligence. We have built very close links on operational capabilities; we are, in a way, intertwined, in a way that we will not want to disentwine-if that is a word. That is in both our national interests, and we can both do something special for each other, and that will remain strong.

Something that we haven't talked much about so far, but this is a pivotal and fascinating moment, is: is there an Anglo-Saxon economic model? We are wondering that right now but don't really want to mention it. As we look to the future, I think that we-Britain and the US-will want to fight for certain aspects of open markets and financial regulation. Although mistakes were made, we don't want to throw out the entire model that in many ways has delivered fantastic wealth for many in other parts of the world. Aspects of trade, open trade, deeper financial markets-even if they're better regulated-could become a common agenda.

Along with Paris and Berlin, in particular, and other European countries, we are united in a view about non-proliferation and the risks that nuclear proliferation carries for us all. We will work together on that common national interest. Again, it doesn't have to be sinister. We have to recognise that there are certain areas where we have a national interest but the US may not. We can't assume that it's special because it covers the waterfront. I don't think it does any more.

 

Q15 Ms Stuart: The Committee went to New York and Washington recently and we were struck by the absence of any mention of Al-Megrahi. We expected that to be mentioned. Was that just politeness, or is it something that hasn't really damaged our relationship as much as some aspects of the press seem to suggest?

Dr. Dunn: I got no mention of it when I was in Washington, either. I scoured the US press for it and it was difficult to find. I wonder whether it is a bit of posturing on the part of Americans to get us to change our policies and not go down that direction, rather than a serious threat to information-exchange on intelligence matters.

Dr. Allin: As I recall, at the time American officials said they were angry about it; they didn't like it, but it was not a threat to relations with the UK. I think one can take that pretty much at face value. It's over now.

Dr. Niblett: There have been differences in approach on other counter-terrorism operational aspects in particular, and the balance struck between acting and observing. We have had these irritants through the process. I was there three weeks ago and didn't get much mention of that. What I did hear just about everywhere was something I'll precede with an important point. It all depends where the local politics and domestic politics really play. They did play for a moment on the Al-Megrahi case, with some of the families concerned, but I think it was dealt with. The Conservative party's decision not to be part of the EPP had raised some domestic politics within the US body politic that were being talked about when I was there. I think where the domestic politics come in, is it can take something from being an irritant, which maybe the Government do not want to become a problem, but they are forced to raise it to another level. Neither of those things are fundamental to the relationship, but domestic politics can sometimes get in the way.

 

Q16 Ms Stuart: That leads me to the final question. To what extent do personal relationships between the leaders-the President and the Prime Minister-matter? For example, Gordon Brown is an immensely transatlantic-minded Prime Minister. Does the personal relationship with Obama matter if you were to compare it with David Cameron, who has left the EPP, which really irritated the Americans? Would personality overcome those kinds of conflicts, or is the importance of personal chemistry just something superficial?

Dr. Niblett: The personal chemistry is important. In a world-at least as I see it-where more and more critical foreign policy decisions seem to centralise in the Executive branch, partly because of the media and the speed of reaction, you need to trust somebody and be able to go on instinct at times, as a leader at that pinnacle position. Not having a personal linkage and element and a sense of trust can be problematic; at least it's a plus if you have it.

On the other hand, what are this Administration looking for? Like any US Administration, I think they are looking for delivery. I don't think that they are necessarily deeply upset about the EPP decision-the party chooses whether to join-they are worried about delivery. Will this make it tougher for Britain to deliver a Europe that can be a better partner on particular issues that we have talked about so far? Britain remains a very important partner for the US in Europe. Will it be difficult for Europe to be a partner, with this internal conflict? Will Britain become less constructive, and will Europe, as a result, be less constructive? I don't think it's emotional-it's quite a practical calculation.

Dr. Dunn: President Chirac had a habit of using his mobile phone and being very rude about President Bush on the mobile phone to his friends. Of course, with the Americans' satellite system, he got transcripts on his desk. Bush would never forgive Chirac for the comments he made about how dumb and stupid he was. That made a real difference to that relationship. Only when he was gone were French-American relations able to improve.

The nature of international politics today-the technology of communication and the expectation of leadership-derived diplomacy-is such that personalities matter. They meet an extraordinary number of times in different forums around the world. They are expected to communicate-we have, between Downing Street and the White House, a video link-and to talk on a regular basis. The interaction is so prolific that the personal chemistry matters. We've seen that particularly during the period when Blair was so popular in the States and Brown, for various reasons, was more awkward, partly due to personality, and the relationship suffered. I think personalities matter, unfortunately. They are looking at Cameron, unsure of what to make of him, partly because of the issues you mentioned, and partly because of his attitude to Europe more broadly. They are anxious to see how that will pan out.

Dr. Allin: Personal relationships obviously matter-it would be silly to suggest that they don't. Alliances and relationships of trust are important. Having said that, the flip side is that you can get into a situation where things are personalised in a negative sense, to the detriment of what should be common work and common interest. I think about President Bush's relationships with the leaderships of Spain, Germany and France. Although it is important, it is not something to obsess about.

 

Q17 Sir Menzies Campbell: Isn't it the truth that we shouldn't put too much store on this personal relationship aspect? It didn't stop the invasion of Grenada and it certainly didn't stop F-111s flying from Lakenheath. These were actions conceived of as being in the strategic interests of the United States, notwithstanding the very close personal relationships at that time between the Prime Minister and the President-they went ahead. That is why I was rather relieved to hear Dr. Dunn say that if you think about this from the other side of the Atlantic, the truth is, our relationship with the United States is, I think you said, based on a conception of where our national interest lies. It is in our national interest to have access to intelligence. It is in our national interest to have access, unlike anyone else, to nuclear technology, and also defence co-operation. It is in our national interest to be part of the joint strike fighter programme and put £3 billion into it, because it gives us some leverage but also gives us access to equipment that we would not be able to fund ourselves. So perhaps the partnership is best understood as being a partnership of mutual interest, which has some tinges of affection around it, some nostalgia, and sometimes some personal relationships. But if you think about it all the time as being about national interest, that is a much more logical and more explicable analysis. Would you agree with that?

Dr. Dunn: Exactly right. If you go back to the F-111 decisions from Lakenheath, that was a deliberate quid pro quo for American support during the Falklands war. The deal was "You support the Falklands and we will support you in this". Even though Thatcher might have gritted her teeth over it, that was the deal that was done.

Sir Menzies Campbell: I remember it was Lord Tebbit who gritted his teeth more than anyone else.

 

Q18 Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: There is a book called "The Death of Distance", which proposes that, because of communications and information technology, geography does not matter any more and what counts by extension are things such as language, culture and historical experiences, and therefore the colossal interchange between the United States and here-the films that people watch, the music they listen to, the trips they make, the language they speak-is arguably increasing in intensity. Is this just sentimentality, or would this actually decide the sacrifices that people might make in a crisis? Alternatively, is it the case that hard-headed military power and diplomatic clout renders this populist cultural dimension unimportant?

Dr. Allin: What is this sacrifice that Britain is making in a crisis, and the crisis that followed September 11, for example? I am not saying that a cold-headed look at British interests would not have brought the same decision. In fact, in the case of Iraq, it might have brought a better decision. There is no question but that moral sentiment, if I may use that phrase, has influenced great sacrifices on the part of Britain and it is appreciated in the United States. Your suggestion that this will become more intense because of communications-I suppose that is true. This is getting very personal but I can give you a counter-example. I am much more plugged into my own country and much less plugged into Britain, in a sense. I should not say the latter part, but even though I have lived here for 12 years, because of the Web I am much more connected to culture and political debates and so forth in the United States than I would be. In a sense, that alienates me from my British hosts. I do not want to exaggerate that. I say that only because I lived abroad in the '80s, when one did not have that. Also I was younger and more open to experience, but I was a little more into the foreign culture and politics in the country I was living in then. I have just thought of this. I do not know if that makes any sense.

Dr. Dunn: Distance matters in a variety of ways, but distance has shrunk. It has shrunk by virtue of technology. It is replaced by a new speciality. Academic geographers are really thrilled by the different conceptions of space brought about by the technology revolution. Some people talk about the easyJet map of Europe, how Europe has changed its geography by virtue of where the chief networks of flights go and how any notion of what Europe is is actually influenced by those things. In terms of Britain's relations with the US, geography matters in one sense in that, where we are, the time zones mean that the City of London is uniquely placed to be in the hub of business: it is awake at the right time for the rest of the world, at the end of the day and the start of the day. Distance has an effect that way.

Language is important as well. In a sense, Britain benefits from the fact that the superpower on the world stage speaks English. The fact that English, or American English, has become the international lingua franca means that we benefit as a consequence. Everyone speaks English and we can influence them by virtue of the fact that we speak English and that we produce our cultural artefacts and output in English. It therefore has a worldwide audience. Our diplomacy benefits from the fact that we can speak English to the world and it can understand what we are saying. We can communicate with the whole world directly in English, and we are good at doing that.

The hard-part aspect also matters-this is something that I mentioned in my written evidence-in that we are approaching the prospect of a defence review that may require us to make hard decisions on where we spend the money, especially if the defence budget is going to be asked to make significant cuts in capability. The capacity to actually be on the ground in Iraq to support American operations in a variety of different theatres is not a capacity that every other state has. Therefore, if we find ourselves in a situation five or 10 years hence where, by virtue of our lack of capabilities, our solidarity with Americans in defence terms were lacking, I think that would be to the detriment of the overall relationship.

Dr. Niblett: Geography may not matter as much for globalisation in an economic sense, but I think it matters deeply geopolitically. I still think that our conception of who we are and where we are in the world as Britain is affected by our being to the side of Europe, and I think that the US conception of the world is affected by where it is. So I think that geography matters in terms of geopolitics, but not as much for economic globalisation. I will give one line-this is mentioned in my written evidence-and say that, from a cultural standpoint, the US is changing, to state the obvious. It is becoming less Anglo-Saxon and less European, which will have an impact over time. We are not going to see it: it will be gradual and hard to spot, but I see the first changes now.

 

Q19 Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: Dr. Dunn mentioned the importance of military power. There are only two armies in Europe: the French and British armies. Ultimately, that is what counts. Two of us here were on the Convention on the Future of Europe. I went to America at that time and know that there were misgivings in the Bush Administration about the enhanced co-operation articles in the constitution, which is now the Lisbon treaty. They felt that it might separate European military power from NATO and the United States. That was never expressed publicly, because of the Bush-Blair alliance. Have any of those fears been carried over into the Obama Administration, or is it all still about the rather superficial cliché about having a single telephone number for the Europeans and assuming that that is the end of the argument?

Dr. Dunn: I think that a lot of those disquiets were dropped towards the end of the Bush Administration. The fear was more to do with the lack of ability of the Europeans to get their act together to produce any capability that was deployable at all, rather than the configuration that that took. In a sense, it was a case of, "We don't really care how you organise it, but please create some capability." There was frustration; that is what comes through.

The Obama Administration are much more relaxed in their attitudes towards European integration. The ideas that we saw in the early 1990s of the geopolitical rival have largely been discounted. The world has changed so fundamentally and there is recognition of how close we in Europe and America are in terms of our geopolitical view of the world, compared to the rest of the world with the rise of BRICs or the rise of transnational threats to national security more broadly. There is recognition that actually we approach the world in a very similar way.

Chairman: I am conscious that we don't have much time left. There are two more witnesses and there will be a slight delay before we call them.

 

Q20 Andrew Mackinlay: I want to put something to you and ask whether this is the thinking in the United States-it is probably not among the public figures that we see most of all-but is there a feeling that NATO as we know it has run its course and that this feeling might be accelerated by the experience of Afghanistan? Although in theory it is an article 5 operation-I don't say this provocatively-demonstrably it is not. There is not the solidarity. On the Georgian experience, the Bush Administration were going to get Georgia in, but now I think most people reflect and thank God that it didn't come in, because it would have blown article 5 completely. Therefore, if that thesis is true-that people are beginning to think that the thing has run its course-it would raise the question of whether you will have an increased bilateral alliance, perhaps with the UK.

I was particularly struck when your colleague mentioned 1982. The Falklands was not an article 5, yet we were able to cash in on the solidarity. Caspar Weinberger saw the signals that it would send if there were not solidarity and thought that that was important. We were also able to use EU solidarity because Charlie Haughey and the Belgians were locked in. They might have wanted out, but it did prevail.

Compared with 1982, when those relationships did to some extent work, now the big thing is the failure of Afghanistan in terms of NATO, because it is not article 5 as it was intended. It is blown. So are we not on the cusp of a quite seminal moment? In five or 10 years, you guys will be writing that this was the time when things changed-everything does change. Alliances last 60 or 70 years, don't they?

Chairman: May we have brief answers on this question please? I am conscious of time.

Dr. Allin: Yes, of course. Obviously, it is a big subject, but it seemed to me that one could observe, after 11 September 2001, that the big question about NATO was American interest and commitment to it. That story is well known-coalitions of the willing and so forth.

There are many ways in which I think NATO is overloaded and stretched. I think enlargement has introduced differing interests and differing relations with Russia that cannot help but be stressful. You mentioned Georgia. I think that, in a room, privately, there would be remarkable unanimity and consensus between the Americans, the British, the French and the Germans on that subject. But of course the Americans, and maybe the British to a certain extent, are also tugged towards their client relations-that is not the word I want to use-their relations with east Europeans.

I do not disagree with any of your analysis, but sometimes you set tests that are impossible. Afghanistan may or may not be a success. I do not think it is necessarily going to be a question of alliance solidarity, or even European and British contributions. I think it may just be too difficult. It does not make sense to say that NATO failed at something that could not be done.

Dr. Niblett: NATO was article 5 with Afghanistan when it really was an attack, if you see what I say, on the US directly. The NATO operation in Afghanistan has evolved enormously since then and for many countries it is not an article 5 question anymore. So, for me, I would rather it were not a test on the future of NATO. It may end up being that way politically-there is nothing I can do about it-but I think it is an unfair test for NATO and I think David was saying that.

I do not think it is the end of NATO. I do not think the US wants to give up the one seat where it is at the table with the Europeans as an equal, or even maybe a lot more than an equal, and they will fight to maintain it. The key question is how it is redefined. As you know, the whole strategic concept issue is going on right now. I think that they will give that time, genuine time, and effort. Cybersecurity, energy security-there are many dimensions that are emerging on what the future NATO may be involved in. On missile defence, I think the new structure that has been put out got so much stick at the beginning, because of pretty bad handling, politically. But if you look into the detail, this could be a fascinating new area where the US and the European countries will all be working together on a form of protection that matters to all of them-Europeans and the US.

This will be my last point on this. Distance matters; it is critical. This is another place where distance matters. For most European countries you just cannot stretch NATO beyond an extended regional defence. That is what we are trying to deliver with at the moment and Afghanistan is probably just beyond the edge of that reach. If we can get it thinking effectively about north Africa, the Caucasus, the Iranian missile threat within that inside arc, maybe we'll hang in there.

Dr. Dunn: NATO has been a different creature in every decade of its existence. It has evolved to meet the circumstances of the time. That is true of this decade as of previous ones. For institutional reasons America will not give up its involvement in NATO. It very much sees it as a way to influence European politics more broadly and is concerned about its lack of influence within the EU. From an American perspective it is strong and the article 5 foundation will remain for the future.

Afghanistan is a challenge to it, however. If Operation Allied Force in 1999 over Kosovo was seen as a success for NATO, then Afghanistan, to this point, has been much more of a failure. As a consequence, the legacy of Afghanistan might be much more coalitions of the willing rather than trying to do things as the alliance. As Dr. Niblett explained, as the proliferation concerns of the Middle East and north Africa develop, we may see a new incarnation of NATO in future.

 

Q21 Mr. Illsley: My question relates to our diplomatic service in the US. We have been told in evidence that the Foreign Office and the diplomatic service get access to US decision makers at the very highest level and that our diplomatic staff are called upon for advice by the Administration. To a certain extent the new Administration looked for advice from our diplomatic service when conducting reviews shortly after they came into office. Do that high-level access and respect translate into practical influence? Are there any concrete examples of that, or, in terms of what Dr. Niblett said earlier, is the question irrelevant in that we should not expect influence from our diplomatic service in those circumstances because the relationship is evolving and moving away from the traditional areas that were classed as a special relationship?

Dr. Niblett: I shall jump in and try to be quick on this. It is a very important question. There is no doubt that British diplomats and certain Ministers and the Prime Minister have an intimate relationship and a more regular relationship than just about any other diplomats across the broad area. This gives them the opportunity to influence how the United States conceptualises its problems. So the conceptualisation part-how the United States thinks about a problem-is where we can really make a difference. Sometimes, influencing how it thinks about a problem can lead us to influencing the decision, but we cannot assume that the former leads to the latter.

This Administration may or may not have been influenced by the British Government, but certainly the work we have done on climate change with them is shared within the Administration. Will that enable America to deliver America on this? Probably not, because of their system of government. On Afghanistan, we have been intimately involved, as I understand it, in the review process. But now the final decisions are going to be made. Perhaps others know better than I do, but my sense, from some of the meetings that are happening there with Barack Obama, is that he is going to have to make a call based on all sorts of aspects, including US domestic politics, where our influence is going to have to step back.

My point is that it is very important to be able to be there to conceptualise the problem. We do that. In terms of success, the US has come to love the G20, if I can put it that way. That has been partly as a result of thinking about it and going round the table with its British partners, even though we may end up losing out a bit from this, but that is another story. Our ability to take conceptualisation to influence cannot be taken for granted. As we said, in the end it comes down to national interest. At some time the US Government will decide, "What is in our national interest? Nice that you conceptualised it that way, but in the end we are going to do something different." We cannot stop them.

Dr. Allin: I will just underline one of Robin's examples. The concept of a proper response to the financial and economic meltdown was in the first instance a shared US and UK idea. I personally think that it was the correct one. So at a time when people were worried about the end of the special relationship this is an area where there was clear US and British leadership. That came from having the same concept of the problem and the solution.

Dr. Dunn: I noticed that you picked on the start of the Obama Administration. Mr. Obama has been particularly slow, even though the trend is slow, to appoint people to the political appointee positions in the US Administration. In that vacuum, there is a very good opportunity for the British to get their point of view in there. Indeed, I have watched in Washington the way in which the British diplomats operate. They are an independent player in the American inter-agency process, which of course is traditionally an invitation to struggle between different branches and agencies of the Government. Britain tries to influence every different aspect, to play its cards in trying to get different agencies to work for what they regard as British interests and British values. That is a very skilled role, playing the system to British advantage-they are very good at doing that. There are multiple examples, which we can all think of, in the financial world, the intelligence world or the defence-industry world, in which that influence has brought tangible benefits as a consequence.

 

Q22 Mr. Illsley: The Committee is really concerned that we could see some cuts to what has been described as our Rolls-Royce diplomatic service in the US. Is that going to be disastrous for us, if we cut back?

Dr. Dunn: I think, pound for pound, you cannot get better value for money than spending money on diplomats in Washington and indeed elsewhere. The influence that Britain gets in terms of trade policy and pursuing the national interest from our skilled and highly regarded diplomatic service is extraordinary. To cut it back would be extraordinarily short-sighted.

Chairman: Thank you very much, gentlemen. We may have some follow-up questions, which we will write to you about, but may I say, Dr. Niblett, Dr. Allin and Dr. Dunn-the three doctors, as you will now be known-thank you very much for coming along today. It has been a very valuable session.

 

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Professor Malcolm Chalmers, Royal United Services Institute, and Lord Wallace of Saltaire, gave evidence.

 

Q23 Chairman: Thank you. Gentlemen, you sat through the previous session, so you heard what was said. In this session we are going to concentrate more on the defence and intelligence side of the relationship, but for the record could you both introduce yourselves before we begin?

Lord Wallace: I am William Wallace. I have two hats, and I shall put on my academic one rather than my partisan hat here. I went to the United States for the first time in 1962, spending three and a half years there as a graduate student and teacher. I have been there on a fairly regular basis-once or twice a year-ever since, so I think that I have seen the relationship change. It was very much a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant élite when I went there, but it certainly no longer is-that is part of the whole shift. I continue to follow transatlantic relations as closely as I can.

Professor Chalmers: I am a professorial fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, where I have been for a couple of years, and I am also a professor at King's college, London. I worked in the Foreign Office for a couple of years, about three years ago, so I have some insight from that period.

Chairman: And you have given evidence to our Committee before-quite recently, in fact.

Professor Chalmers: I have indeed.

 

Q24 Chairman: I begin by asking you both about the importance to the US of the defence relationship with the UK. How important is it to the United States?

Lord Wallace: It is important, above all because under the last Administration, as under the previous ones, the United States does not really like to be unilateralist. It therefore likes to have allies. The United Kingdom has been one of the most loyal allies in military deployment elsewhere-Vietnam being the great exception over the last 60 years. The remark that I quoted in my International Affairs article was that Obama, as a candidate, said that Bush multilateralism is rounding up the United Kingdom and Togo, and calling it a multilateral operation. That expresses the downside of matters. The upside is that, having the British ready to go has often been the trigger to persuading others to go alongside, such as in the Balkans, in the first Gulf war and, indeed, in the second Gulf war.

Professor Chalmers: I agree with that, but we have to put it into perspective. The US is more important to the UK than we are to it, because of our size. Whether we are important in particular circumstances often depends on what we bring to the table, whether it is the symbolic importance of being there-which we discussed-military capabilities or basing it on whatever it might be. The structural question that has not yet been answered is about what the shift of the strategic focus of the United States away from Europe is doing. The long-term implication of that is that European powers are less important to the United States in its military calculations than they were during the cold war, because Europe is relatively safe.

 

Q25 Chairman: The UK is making and has made big contributions to a number of military engagements over the years. Do we get sufficient return from the US for all our efforts alongside it?

Lord Wallace: That depends on how you define "sufficient". If you look at the contribution made in the first Gulf war or, indeed, in Afghanistan, it is small by comparison with America. That is part of the growing imbalance of the special relationship. When Winston Churchill defined "the special relationship", he defined it as a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire, and the United States. We still had the Indian Army as part of it-just, at that point. As we have shrunk and lost the Commonwealth and Empire, we have clearly become much less important. How much influence you think you can buy by how much defence contribution you make is, after all, the crucial question for the security review, which the British will have to have next year. The sentiment of a lot of people in and around the Ministry of Defence is that we need either to spend more on buying influence or accept that we have less than we would like.

 

Q26 Chairman: When you say, "spend more", do you mean that it depends on how much American military equipment we buy or how much we spend as the UK on defence?

Lord Wallace: I mean much more of the latter. We probably need larger forces. We perhaps need two to three aircraft carriers. To reinforce what Malcolm has just said, American interests have shifted away from Europe in terms of the projection of power across the greater Middle East, above all, and perhaps in the Asia Pacific region. That is much more difficult for the British to do unless we have long-range transport and Oceanic naval deployment, and those things cost a lot of money.

Professor Chalmers: It always seems that it is important to emphasise that influence is a means to an end. The end of British relationships with the United States is not to have influence, for the sake of having influence. It is not to be Greece to America's Rome and be a wiser counsel. It is to ensure that Britain's interests are protected. One way of doing that is to have a very good relationship with the most powerful and generally sympathetic power on the planet, which sometimes has a rather different take on things from us.

To do that, we have to have a starting point of our being able to articulate and understand for ourselves what we want, then going into a process with the United States and trying to convince it to take what we want into account, in return for us contributing something to what it wants. It is perhaps a more hard-headed approach, getting away from the idea that because of our history and so on we are inextricably linked no matter what happens.

 

Q27 Chairman: Professor Chalmers, you referred in your written submission to there "never" being "any question of" the UK "being involved in these operations" in Afghanistan and Iraq "without US military commitment." Can I turn it around the other way? Can you conceive of any circumstances in which a British Government would refuse to make a military contribution to a joint operation with the US? Given that we went to Kosovo and both the Iraq wars, and we are in Afghanistan now, can you conceive of any circumstances in which we might in the foreseeable future say, "No", either because we do not have the military capabilities or, more importantly, because we think that we wish to take an alternative view, in line with our European partners for example?

Professor Chalmers: I am sure other people here are best placed for political speculation but, yes, I can conceive of circumstances in which the US decides on a particular course of military action and the UK says, "Count us out on this." To give one example, which admittedly is slightly retrospective, if President Bush had decided two years ago to take military action against Iran on the nuclear file, I do not think that the United Kingdom would have been part of that action. So, I think it is conceivable.

Lord Wallace: I think that if there were problems on the Taiwan strait now, which is not completely inconceivable in a Chinese and American military confrontation, I think it unlikely that the British would wish to be involved-or indeed would be able to be involved. A Royal Navy deployment went past Singapore the year before last, to demonstrate that the Royal Navy could still do it, but I very much doubt whether we would now see ourselves as being involved in that sort of very distant confrontation.

 

Q28 Chairman: But generally your view would be, for reasons you have given earlier, that our military, our MOD in particular, would be very keen to have close co-operation with the United States.

Lord Wallace: I think there is an established mindset in the Ministry of Defence that that is after all one of the key questions that we need to maintain. The problem that I have with it is the circularity of the argument. We have to spend money and buy the kit in order to maintain access. Then the question is how much influence the access gives you. I was quite struck by those who told me that we have had people embedded in the analytical stage of the discussion of US policy towards Afghanistan, but the Americans insisted on taking the embedded British officers out when they moved on to the strategy stage. That is access without influence. It is clearly going to be a question for anyone's security review: where are our interests in this and how much are we going to spend in order to buy privileged access?

 

 

Q29 Mr. Illsley: That leads me nicely into a mixed group of questions. The Committee has been quite exercised recently, not least when we were in Washington just over a week ago, by signs that there are sections within the American military who are unhappy with the efforts of the British military. These concerns were put to us quite forcefully in a recent meeting in Washington. Do you attach any importance to those claims? Do you think that they are true? The claims are really that our performance in Afghanistan was not as good as it should have been, perhaps through defence cuts, perhaps because of stories of inadequate equipment, troop numbers and so on. The criticism was coming from a very high level in the US military.

Professor Chalmers: I would attach importance to that. We should take it with due concern. Some people in the American military remember the time when we were telling them that we knew everything there was to know about counter-insurgency from our experience in Northern Ireland and Malaya. We were perhaps rather complacent, so there is a little bit of getting back at us. It also reflects the fact that the American military, partly because of its greater resources and its greater agility and leadership, has moved on an enormous amount in thinking about counter-insurgency, warfare and the sort of operations that are happening in Afghanistan, in particular. We are trying to follow it from a position in which our resources are much more constrained.

There is a genuine problem here. One of the implications for us when thinking about the future of our defence forces and future defence operations is whether we might be better taking on tasks that we are sure we can do or are more confident about in order to show the Americans that we will do what we promise. In learning from our experience in both Basra and Helmand, we can be more careful about taking on tasks that basically involve having the main responsibility for entire areas, so, in a way, we are running our own independent-at least, autonomous-intervention.

In Basra, as long as things were going well, the Americans really did not notice us very much. Indeed, the central Government in Baghdad did not notice us very much. Once things started to go a bit badly, the Americans said, "Hang on, you said that you had this sorted." There is a little bit of that in Helmand as well. It is not easy to move on, but we at least need to question the assumption that the best way of operating as part of a coalition is always to take geographical responsibility for an area in an operation that is 80% or 90%, in terms of effective military capability, American.

 

Q30 Mr. Illsley: Your points about Basra and Helmand were interesting because it was put to us that we took on the responsibility of the offensive in Helmand and the Americans were beginning to question why we did so. Was there some legitimacy in that claim?

Professor Chalmers: We took on Helmand at a time when the Americans were focused mainly on Iraq and were not prepared to have the big increase in forces that they have had in recent months and which it looks as though they will continue in the coming months. We did it at a time when ISAF was trying to expand its say over the country. It is fair to say that the political leadership in this country and, indeed, the military advice that it was being given did not anticipate the escalation that occurred. That is the nature of conflict. Things are uncertain, especially in a country such as Afghanistan or, indeed, Iraq. You have to anticipate that things can go badly wrong and then respond to them.

My point is that, even as one of the most powerful militaries in Europe, the resources in the country are such that we found ourselves very quickly overstretched in Helmand. Fortunately, the Americans are now there in great strength and are supporting us. We left ourselves vulnerable to that possibility by being prepared in the first place to say that we would take on such a difficult area by ourselves.

 

Q31 Mr. Illsley: Bearing in mind that, a few moments ago, Lord Wallace said that we need to increase our defence spend to maintain influence, and you talked about strategy and so on, if we are forced into defence cuts in the near future, that relationship between the American military and the British military is likely to come under even further strain.

Lord Wallace: That is very much part of what we all have to discuss next year. Part of the criticism that we are getting from the Americans is that our equipment, helicopters and so on are frankly not up to the level that they expect.

The idea that the British volunteering or leading in can help to make up the Americans' minds is there as a mindset. It worked in Kosovo. Blair was prepared to commit a very large number of British forces to a ground war, when the Clinton Administration was resisting. I recall hearing a senior military officer saying that he and two drivers would be left at the Ministry of Defence if the operation went ahead. It worked there. It did not work so well in Basra, and it did not work so well in Helmand. When you are operating so close to capacity-as we would have been in Kosovo-that is the risk that we are taking.

 

Q32 Ms Stuart: Thank you. That is an interesting perspective on Helmand and the way that can lead us forward. I want to change tack completely. This goes back to the provision of bases to the United States. Lord Wallace in his evidence said: "The United States benefits very considerably from the provision of these bases" and "Britain benefits from this power projection to the extent that it shares US objectives". There are two bases that we have been concerned about in the recent past. One is Diego Garcia and the other is Ascension Island. Do you feel that we have sufficient control over what happens on those bases?

Lord Wallace: Evidently we don't. The whole experience we have had on the question of whether people have been rendered-however one puts it-through Diego Garcia, is that Ministers did not know. A Minister told me off the record that she did not know-

 

Q33 Ms Stuart: She had to apologise to the Committee at some stage.

Lord Wallace: Indeed. It is quite clear that we did not. The story that one gets that these are under British command is completely offset by the relatively junior nature of the attached squadron leader who is the only person there. I know most about Menwith Hill because when I'm driving from Saltaire up to Wensleydale or Nidderdale I drive past it. I happened last summer to be driving past as they were taking the British and American flags down. I stopped and watched a small detachment of American troops taking the Union Jack down. That seems to me a good symbol in the sense of the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom in RAF bases, as they are formally labelled.

 

Q34 Ms Stuart: But what could we do? What would you suggest that the British Government ought to do?

Lord Wallace: There is a parliamentary question here. Going back to the record, there ought at the very least to be some parliamentary accountability of what the status of these bases is. It is slightly better now, with the Intelligence and Security Committee, than it was, but still, I learnt about the very substantial increase in the number of American personnel to Alconbury and Menwith Hill post 9/11 partly because I had friends who worked for Harrogate borough council and partly because the wife of one of these American officers came to see me at the LSE about whether she could do some graduate work while her husband had been posted to Alconbury. None of this appeared in the British press. It does seem that at least some Members of the British Parliament ought to have been told that a surge in American intelligence personnel had arrived in Britain.

 

Q35 Ms Stuart: Let me pin you down. What is that process? You know how this place works. You know how the place works down here and up your end. What would be your mechanism for making that accountable? The Intelligence Committee is answerable to the Prime Minister, not to Parliament. What about the Defence Committee? Tell me, what do you think we should do?

Andrew Mackinlay: Me.

Ms Stuart: Other than Andrew Mackinlay.

Lord Wallace: I think it is a matter more for your place than mine. I think there ought to be a demand at least for a White Paper setting out what the formal arrangements are. I have been unable to discover whether there is a lease on Menwith Hill, for example. As I understand it, there isn't any longer a lease on Menwith Hill. So it is there for as long as the Americans wish to have it. There is an excellent new paper on US-European relations published by the European Council on Foreign Relations in which Nick Witney, who used to be a Ministry of Defence civil servant, remarks that when the Americans upgraded the Fylingdales radar system, Her Majesty's chief scientific adviser went to Washington to ask about the technical specifications of the upgraded radar, and he was not allowed to see classified material. That seems to me rather odd for a major installation on the sovereign territory of the United Kingdom.

Professor Chalmers: Perhaps I could add to this briefly. The UK itself, as well as bases in Diego Garcia, Ascension Island and Cyprus, is very important to the United States. When we have discussions that are framed around the proposition that unless we do A, B or C we will threaten our relationship with the United States, we have to remember that those bases are really quite an important card for us, which we do not have to remind the Americans of. They know they are important to their interests, but it does mean that we can be a little more self-confident that the Americans are not going to take steps that are fundamentally against our interests, without there being consequences.

 

Q36 Mr. Horam: I take it from what you both said earlier, that you would agree that our influence with America would be reduced if there were significant defence cuts by the UK Government in the near future.

Lord Wallace: In so far as the core of the special relationship is defence and security, yes.

Mr. Horam: Would you agree?

Professor Chalmers: One would have to spell out the scenarios a bit more. We are probably entering a period in which the UK will have to make significant defence cuts but so will the United States. I don't think the UK will be the only country facing defence economies.

 

Q37 Mr. Horam: It has been suggested to us that if we look at spending in the whole area-including the Foreign Office and intelligence-we could minimise this reduction in influence if we spent more, as Eric Illsley suggested, on our FCO forces and intelligence services. Those two could be better value for money in terms of influence, if we have less money to spend, and would also help to keep our relationship with the US Government. Would that be fair?

Lord Wallace: It depends on the sort of threats you are facing. If we are facing further conventional military threats, the United States would be looking for military assistance. There is a wonderful phrase in Nick Witney's report: he says the United States looks for assistance, the Europeans ask for consultation. That is a generic problem. If, on the other hand, the security agenda is moving more to problems of immigration, climate change and counter-terrorism, our investment should in any case be in that direction, in our own interests. That is part of the debate we need on our own priorities for a national security review.

Professor Chalmers: And, of course, the spending priority given to the intelligence services has increased substantially in recent years, so that increase has occurred both domestically and internationally.

I agree that the Foreign Office is relatively good value for the amount of money spent. I would be tempted to give that a relatively higher priority at the margins. There are still ways in which the Foreign Office can look for effectiveness in deploying people in the right places and changing priorities. That shouldn't be off the table, either. I suspect, however, to be realistic, that the Foreign Office is going to have to take its share of economies.

 

Q38 Mr. Horam: A recommendation made to us by another witness, is that if this scenario of lower defence spending happens, we might need to hasten the development of the European security and defence identity, provided that is done in concert with Washington and not in opposition. Is that something to which you would attach importance?

Lord Wallace: I would say, for broader reasons, closer Franco-British co-operation has a very strong logic. How far it is under the formal framework of ESDP-

 

Q39 Mr. Horam: What is the logic you would point to?

Lord Wallace: We're both facing a point where it is difficult separately to afford the sort of serious equipment that we want. Thus, if you are to have one full aircraft carrier each, it makes a lot of sense to try to work together. We are, after all, in Helmand with Danes, Dutch and Estonians. Those are the ones with whom we have been co-operating on the ground in recent years. The north European countries have been up there with us and quite often closely integrated with us. We haven't always flagged that to the United States. I wrote an article five years ago for Survival, which grew out of an argument in Washington in which the Americans said, "You Europeans aren't doing anything." We then went off, Bastian Giegerich and I, and pulled together just how much different European countries were putting together on various deployments outside our regions. The interesting part of that was how far the Dutch, the Danes, the Swedes and the Finns came up strongly, as well as the French.

Professor Chalmers: My attitude would be that we should continue to look at ways in which we can co-operate more with other European states on defence, and there are clear areas, especially in our neighbourhood, where Europeans should be taking the lead in defence matters, for example, the Balkans, Moldova or wherever. I am more sceptical about the proposition that such co-operation will save money. I think that in order to achieve real savings on something such as procurement and not actually spend more, which has been the experience with some European co-operation projects, you have to have a degree of sharing of sovereignty, which, I suspect, is not acceptable.

The aircraft carrier example, which William gave, is a good one. It essentially means saying, "If we can only afford one aircraft carrier after this defence review rather than two, then, since the French only have one, we can co-ordinate our refit schedules and our aircraft can use each other's carriers. Indeed, we can do that with the Americans as well." Yes, why not? Maybe at the margins, that is driven by expense, but I am hesitant about the broader argument that European co-operation is more cost-effective; it just seems to me to make sense because the Americans will not always want to be involved in issues that they see as primarily European.

 

Q40 Sir John Stanley: I want to turn to the US-UK intelligence relationship. This is of course an entirely public meeting and we do not expect answers at any level other than that. Firstly, what do you judge to be the aspects of the US-UK intelligence relationship that are most highly valued by the US and, separately, by the UK?

Lord Wallace: I think that the Americans have most valued the human intelligence contribution and the analytical contribution that the British bring-an alternative source. Certainly from one or two conferences that I went to in Washington after 9/11/2001, I think that there are those within the American intelligence community who also valued the British having an autonomous capability, because we could take in things at a higher level than they could in Washington, at a point when the Bush Administration did not want to listen to a number of people within its own intelligence community.

The SIGINT relationship works. We provide Cyprus and Menwith Hill and the Americans use them. That is a more automatic dimension of it all, but I think that the sharing of analysis is probably what they value most. Again, it is not an exclusive relationship now. I sat in on a fascinating private meeting some months ago, in which a number of British personnel were talking about how much they now value the sharing of analysis with our European partners, so the world is changing again. The Americans, when they are talking about the Middle East or east Asia, obviously find it more valuable to share with others who have more resources in those regions than we do.

 

Q41 Sir John Stanley: And the other half of my question: what do you think the UK most values from the US-UK relationship?

Lord Wallace: Access to a far larger operation than we can afford.

Professor Chalmers: Including a massive amount of signals intelligence. We value access to a lot of intelligence gathered technically-signals intelligence-that we do not have the resources to gather ourselves, so that is very important to us. In human intelligence, I think that the fact that it is a second centre of analytical capabilities is rather important.

In a business that, inevitably, can sometimes be dominated by group-think, it is good to have a second group because it may come up with a different way of looking at things and it has an autonomy in career structure and everything else, which means that there is not the same pressure to agree with each other. So, I think that can be really important. I think we have some assets in some countries that the Americans do not have, for historical reasons, so we add something there.

Lord Wallace: But again, that is not exclusive to us. I was told, some while ago, that with some of the former Portuguese states in Africa, about which we are rather short of intelligence, we have to rely very much on others. So, a great deal depends on which country the new crisis blows up in as to how valuable we are and who has the best resources.

 

Q42 Sir John Stanley: Thank you. Can I just come to the Binyam Mohamed case? The issue here, as the Foreign Secretary has made clear, is not about the degree of sensitivity of the particular paragraphs. The key factor is whether there is a breach of the fundamental principle that if you give intelligence to another country, you expect the confidentiality of that intelligence to be maintained. The question I would like to ask you first of all, therefore, is do you think that the Foreign Secretary was right to go to appeal, from the judgment of the High Court to the Appeal Court, which is what he is now doing?

Lord Wallace: I want to say that I am not sufficiently expert in this case. I do however say that it has been a consistent happening over the past 30 or more years that more information is available in Washington than in London. Quite often highly confidential or secret information that we are holding in London is published in Washington, so I am doubtful about the basis for the Foreign Secretary's case.

Professor Chalmers: Like William, I am treading rather beyond my area of expertise. I am not a lawyer, but my instinct is that having the ability to exchange information with the United States on a confidential basis is actually rather important to the relationship. We have to take seriously the Foreign Secretary's concern that if a precedent is established and extended in this area, less information will be shared.

 

Q43 Sir John Stanley: That brings me to the next question that I would like to put to you both. Would you like to give us your judgment about what the implications might be should the Foreign Secretary lose his case-in other words, about the creation of a precedent in which US intelligence has been given to this country and, as a result of a judicial process in this country, ends up in the public domain? Do you think that it might be a matter about which Washington will shrug its shoulders and say that it is of no great consequence, or would it take a much more serious view and, on a permanent basis, reduce the degree of transmitting sensitive intelligence to us across the board?

Professor Chalmers: I do not know. The first question that the Americans will ask us is what precedent it creates for the future. I guess that their reaction will depend in large measure on the answer to that question.

Lord Wallace: I doubt that it would have a permanent impact because, after all, in relation to the previous Administration, the US intelligence community was not entirely united about what the Bush Administration were doing. I recall going to one conference when I came away thinking that part of the opposition to Bush was inside the Administration, so to speak, so I doubt whether it would lead to a permanent break. The United States is driven by national interests. We are providing a lot of valuable information on a range of issues in which it continues to be interested. It will want to continue exchanging information.

Professor Chalmers: But it seems that the issue is not whether, in this particular case, the countries agreed with what each other was doing, or whether the Bush Administration behaved badly and the current Administration believes that they were wrong. The issue is that, if the Americans are doing something very sensitive in, say, Afghanistan or Iran and are thinking about whether they want to discuss it with their British counterparts, they will want to know that they can discuss it frankly without it getting into the public domain through the British legal system. If there is not a reasonable degree of assurance about that, it will make them bite their tongue more than they have.

 

Q44 Chairman: Finally, can I ask you about the nuclear relationship? How much does the reliance on and relationship with the United States about nuclear matters affect foreign policy choices?

Professor Chalmers: That's a very hard question to answer. It certainly affects British decisions in the area of nuclear weapons. The fact that we have this close nuclear weapons relationship with the United States clearly constrains the exploration of other options, for example, in relation to France. Does it have a bigger impact? I have heard people argue that it makes it more difficult for the UK to take a fundamentally different position from the US in international crises because the US has the capacity to disable our deterrent, given a period of years. It would create at least a major crisis for us to be able to maintain it in some form.

There are a number of different factors preventing the UK from going in a fundamentally different direction from the US. It is over-determined and maybe this adds a little to the picture but it doesn't seem to be fundamental. After all, it wasn't long after the Nassau agreement that Harold Wilson refused to go to Vietnam, despite American requests, and that didn't have any impact on the nuclear relationship that I know of. One can exaggerate that. Clearly there are things at the margins that Americans could do if we cut up awkward in other areas, so it does increase a degree of interdependence.

Chairman: Lord Wallace?

Lord Wallace: No, I am happy to agree with that.

 

Q45 Chairman: How important to the US is the UK nuclear deterrent? Will the UK have any influence in the current US nuclear posture review?

Professor Chalmers: I think the UK nuclear force is not very important for the US. There would be questions if there were a possibility of the UK giving up its force altogether. But the consequences for France would be much greater than they were for the United States. That is a very hypothetical question. Basically, it is not very important.

I am sure the UK is being consulted on the nuclear posture review but would not have a big input into it. The UK may have rather more influence in the NATO strategic concept discussion which is covering the role of nuclear weapons in NATO's future posture and the discussion about the placement of weapons in Germany and so on. The UK nuclear deterrent is at present assigned to NATO, so there we have a structural position which we can use, but in relation to the US domestic NPR, much less so.

Lord Wallace: When we were having the last great debate on renewal at the beginning of the 1960s, though we were in the middle of the cold war, the argument for the British nuclear deterrent was very much as an additional uncertainty factor in facing up to a Soviet threat. That did buy all sorts of attention and interest in Washington. Now that the United States is much more concerned about Iran, south Asia, China and other potential threats outside Europe, we play a much smaller part in all those calculations. So whether Britain has a residual deterrent or not is much less important, except perhaps in the debates about the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

Professor Chalmers: Of course the caveat I would add is that we live now in a period in which nuclear confrontation and deterrence is less relevant in Europe. If we were to return to a period in which it became more important, consideration of the UK deterrent would rise in salience.

Lord Wallace: Harold Wilson once offered to send out submarines to the Indian ocean in order to protect India against China, but I doubt whether any future British Government would wish to make that pledge.

Chairman: Given that India is now a nuclear weapon state I suspect that is a bit of an academic consideration. Gentlemen, thank you very much. We appreciate your time. This has been a very useful session. We may have one or two questions that we would like to pursue in writing. Thank you very much indeed.