Examination of Witness (Questions 20-35)
Mr Dan Smith OBE
22 MAY 2008
Q20 Lord Crickhowell: You have moved
onto the point I was going to raise with you. Having spent a large
part of the last year on the Joint Committee and then debating
the Climate Change Bill, having taken considerable interest in
the challenge made by Nigel Lawson in his recent book, while I
do not agree with the main thrust I think he makes some very serious
points which have to be taken seriously, not least on this whole
question of adaptation. Earlier you referred to Bangladesh and
Holland and the difference in approach. Would it not be right
that up to now the European approach has perhaps had most of its
emphasis on emissions trading and controlling CO2 emissions and
so on and not enough on the priority which we have to give to
adaptation? You observed quite rightly that it is going to be
a very long time before we find a solution, a fact that Al Gore
almost totally ignores incidentally in his report, he does not
talk about solutions. It is going to take time and ought there
not to be much more emphasis on adaptation?
Mr Smith: That is absolutely my position.
There should be much more emphasis on adaptation not because mitigation
is unimportant but, as we have said, it will take time, even in
the best scenario, before it has its effect. Adaptation has been
the poor relation within the climate change debate and the emphasis
when there has been reference to adaptation, because it gets sparked
by major events, is looking at things like the Burma cyclone now
and adaptation is understood as being readiness for disaster.
It is not just sudden onset changes or sudden shocks that we have
to worry about, it is also the slow onset change. Year by year
things move, just slightly, and you barely notice. That also needs
to be prepared for. Adaptation to help people in that context
is also part of it.
Q21 Lord Crickhowell: Particularly
as some of these great shocks probably have nothing to do with
global warming.
Mr Smith: Maybe, maybe not.
Lord Crickhowell: Everyone now takes
a natural disaster and blames global warming. There is very little
evidence that they do necessarily arise from global warming. The
point you make I think is a very important one.
Q22 Lord Hannay of Chiswick: Moving
onto the strategic objectives that were set out in the European
Security Strategy, it sets out three strategic objectives for
the EU: address the threats which have been identified; build
security in the EU's neighbourhood; and work towards an international
order based on effective multilateralism. In your view, were those
the right strategic objectives? Are they still the right strategic
objectives? If so, what should be the balance of priorities between
them, if any? Or should the priorities be found within each of
the three?
Mr Smith: I think one can do a certain
amount of re-organising of objectives and how they are expressed
which would maybe make things look a little more elegant but which
does not have a real substantive effect. For personal preference
I would say that to address the threats would be bullet point
one and point two would be to address the source of the threats.
That task of addressing the source of the threats I think can
be looked at within the EU neighbourhood, among fragile states
and in the international system. That would be an intellectual
scheme which I would lay out but I do not think I would get to
very different places in terms of substance when compared to the
Security Strategy. I think that in terms of the priorities I would
say that these tasks within the EU, in the neighbourhood, among
fragile states and in the international system are tasks of equal
importance but that does not mean that each task is as expensive
or as resource heavy to carry out. It would be from that direction
that I would go into the argument. Ensuring the smooth functioning
of the world system, or ensuring its better functioning, as a
multi-lateral system of rule-based/law-based international relations
could be probably fulfilled with very little extra cost—perhaps
none extra—compared to what is being spent at the moment.
That does not mean that it is a low priority, in fact I think
it is fundamental. One thing perhaps that should be said in the
European Security Strategy is a statement of values which explains
why a law-based system is absolutely fundamental. In terms of
use of resources I think that ESDP missions should and will continue.
I think there could possibly be a slightly greater pace in them;
on average in the last three or four years they have been doing
two new ones a year. I think as experience is gained it may be
possible to go up to more. I would assume that the need for ESDP
missions within the European Union neighbourhood would be tailing
off over a period of time and therefore there would be opportunities
for shifting those kinds of resources to the wider international
sphere and fragile states. The kind of work that has been done
in the DRC, for example; there are other places where it is worthwhile
to ramp that up a bit.
Q23 Lord Truscott: Following on from
what you have just said, do you think the European Security Strategy
does make the right recommendations for action both in the short
term and long term?
Mr Smith: To be honest, except in very
broad terms and then in one or two specifics, I do not see very
much by way of recommendation for action and I am not sure that
that is a problem. It could over-burden a single document to try
to go all the way from the general statements of values, through
the principles, through the major mechanisms and instruments and
analysis of threats through to action. I think it is true that
Mr Solana actually resisted attempts to turn this into an operational
document, preferring to keep it as a political declaration. It
is more of a doctrine or a concept—as some of our continental
colleagues would say—rather than what we would normally
think of as a strategy. I am not quite sure, to be honest, what
my own opinion is as to whether it is therefore a real gap in
the Strategy that it does not see it all the way through to action.
I think one can argue the benefits either way, but I think it
was a legitimate position or a legitimate decision to say, "Let's
leave it as a political declaratory document" because there
was a need for that at the time. I think in 2008 there is still
a need for clarity about how to play off these different issues,
how to understand the relationships between these different kinds
of threats, where to put the emphasis in terms of the importance
of multi-lateralism, the law-based approach. At least I would
be open to the idea that there is continuing worth in a renewed
political declaration and it does not matter if it does not go
into details of action.
Q24 Chairman: The Strategy which
may come out at the end of this year should be broadly of the
same sort of nature as the one before, although the issues that
we have already discussed might well have to be reviewed and revised
and put into some of the wider context you have discussed.
Mr Smith: I think it is right; I think
that is what makes sense.
Q25 Chairman: The Strategy does call
on the European Union to be "more active, more capable and
more coherent". How far do you feel the European Union has
responded to this call and what more can be done in practice?
Mr Smith: I think "more active",
yes, for sure. The ESDP missions, the role of Roeland van de Geer,
these are good steps forward and things have been done which are
worthy of praise. As I said earlier the European Security Strategy
may not have caused that but it is part of that direction of the
evolution of policy and approaches and it helps explain and justify
those sorts of things. The second one was "more capable".
I feel there is still a long way to go with that. I think there
is still a long way to go with that as one looks through all components
of the EU. In the institutions I think that there is still more
to do. There is a lot of stovepipe thinking. I have had precisely
the experience of sitting in an office talking to somebody about
conflict and the way this was holding back things which the EU
wants to achieve and being told, "Ah yes, but you are talking
about conflict; I do development" and so I had to go to another
office in another building in order to be able to talk about conflict.
The High-Level Panel—but also everybody and their second
cousin—have been pointing out the close relationship between
development and peace issues and it seems to me to be strange
when one finds systems or institutions still structured according
to these separate stovepipes. I think that the capability question
still needs to be addressed more. A lot of the problem here is
that it needs to be addressed in detail; these are issues of the
detail of how different people with different professional experience
work on issues as those issues expand and are redefined. Very
often that sort of detail is well below the radar scanner as far
as the political leaders or even the senior civil servants are
concerned. That is really extremely important. As to coherence,
I think that in the past couple of years there was the famous
incoherence of Commission and Council actually at war in the courts
with each other, but I think that more recently in fact the coherence
of actions is improving. There are an awful lot of forums in which
staff from the Commission and staff from the Council of Ministers
get together and hammer out joint positions. It is much less of
a challenge for them now to develop a common position and I think
the climate change paper that we have been referring to is to
some extent an example of that. I can also think of other examples,
one case in point would be looking at how it has worked in DRC
where I see the nature of the work is moving forward pretty coherently.
Q26 Chairman: We are spending a great
deal of time at the moment of course considering the Lisbon Treaty,
the European Union Reform Treaty. Do you feel there are provisions
in that which ought to help in terms of achieving these objectives?
Mr Smith: I cannot comment; it is not
my bedtime reading. What I do think is that the Treaty offers
the opportunity to address some of these issues and as the External
Action Service is put together I do not see that it needs to be
put together with the same sort of separated institutional structure
internally that the Member States are used to. I would like to
see that issue up on the table and being talked about.
Q27 Lord Crickhowell: I would like
to probe rather further how the Strategy has been and is being
implemented. Right at the start of this discussion you talked
about it providing useful mapping points for EU institutions.
Biscop and Anderson, in their recent analysis which has been given
to us, say that "it serves as a reference framework for day
to day policy making in a rapidly evolving and increasingly complex
international environment". They say that "it has been
omnipresent in EU discourse in many policy documents and decisions
on different aspects of foreign policy, especially those relating
to the CFSP and its military dimension". They go on to the
ESS and the European Security and Defence College training and
various aspects. Yet when I pick up—as we happen to have
it before us this morning—the Commission's Annual Policy
Statement for 2009 and I go through it and I read it from cover
to cover, I cannot find a single reference to it. What I really
want to discover is how far it is being implemented. It is great
to have a strategy that is having an impact and it does seem to
be in certain aspects, but I do find it slightly curious that
there is not even the smallest mention of it in the Commission's
Annual Policy Strategy.
Mr Smith: With respect I think that that
quotation you read out was slightly overheated. It is having an
impact; it is there in the background of thinking. It is a handy
thing to refer to in documents from time to time in order to explain
why a decision or an action is being taken. The question which
you ask about that Strategy document could also be asked about
the country strategy papers. Surely if one has a European Security
Strategy which is addressing this broad range of problems, threats
and issues, it should be somehow reflected in the papers which
the Commission draws up for its relations with and its activities
and support for other countries outside the EU. As far as I can
see, having seen some early drafts—I am not quite sure whether
I should have, but anyway I have—it is not referred to.
It seems to me that the gap which you point to is replicated.
I think this is a case where there is a horrible word that one
uses a lot and finds sometimes devoid of meaning, but it is mainstreaming.
Something like the European Security Strategy or indeed a climate
change policy or many other kinds of policy should be having their
impact and having an identifiable impact which one can point to
in these different areas. Even if it got into all the documents,
would it actually be really being implemented on the ground? That
is an open question, but surely it should first of all be in all
the documents.
Q28 Chairman: Going back to something
you said in response to an earlier question, is the problem that
it looks very much as a Council Secretariat document and the Commission
does not feel they have much ownership of it and therefore perhaps
in the document and the Commission's work strategy it is less
likely to feature than perhaps in documents which are Council
led?
Mr Smith: I think that is very possible
and I think it is also particularly possible that this will be
felt within the area of the European Commission's work which,
to use Lord Hannay's term, is the pretty much traditional development
work. That is where there has been resistance to the bringing
in of security notions and this is also a political resistance
which has been straightforwardly expressed and argued through
in the European Parliament in the process of shaping the financial
perspectives for the current period. I think that that is right.
Being the property of the Council to begin with probably made
that whole process of adoption more efficient and quick, but may
have then hindered the absorption of those ideas into the EU institutions,
particularly into some parts of the Commission. I would say by
contrast that those parts that I know within the Commission dealing
with security and conflict prevention are pretty much awake to
this and it is a real thing for them that influences and helps
guide their work.
Q29 Lord Hannay of Chiswick: On this
issue of the perceived gap between the promulgation of a strategy
and its reflection through into individual policy papers, actions
and so on, I wonder if you could take a heroic attempt to compare
how that takes place between a national presidential directive
in the United States and their practice in foreign policy, how
it takes place in this country where the Foreign Office now publishes
a strategy, and this European one? How would you rank those three
in terms of the connection between the generalities of the strategy
and the practical delivery of policies?
Mr Smith: You are asking me not only
to be heroic but to make some unfair comparisons in this. The
changes which you see in US national security doctrine from one
administration to another, while they may be the stuff of politics
and are being fought out on the hustings and so on and so forth,
actually result in relatively small changes. There are changes
in policy but not fundamental changes in approach. The task of
absorption then is perhaps somewhat less. What you certainly do
see in the US—as I think you see in pretty much every national
governing structure—is that depending on how dynamically
and forcefully the institutions are led, that is going to have
an awful lot of impact on the absorption. For example, when you
have a strong leader in the Pentagon as, whatever his other merits
or demerits may have been (and I do not want to go there), Donald
Rumsfeld was a strong leader in the Pentagon, then he saw to it
that the ideas which he saw as being central to US national security
needs and strategic thinking were absorbed as they needed to be.
People were shifted around and moved. One of the advantages in
the US system is the number of political appointments which are
made within the government institutions. I think in the case of
the UK, if I take one of the specific issues which we have been
talking about, the relationship between development and peace,
over the past three or four years I have seen quite considerable
movement in the way in which traditional diplomats are thinking
about these issues and the way in which people within DfID in
traditional development are thinking about these issues. I am
always impatient that it pushes further. I think that the perspectives,
without trying to stroke you too much, outlined in the High-Level
Panel report seem to be approximately the place where this needs
to go. I am impatient that they should be taken up further, but
I cannot deny and do not want to deny the very visible progress
that there has been in that debate moving forward.
Q30 Chairman: In London?
Mr Smith: Yes, in London. In the case
of the EU I think this big division between the two institutions—between
the Council of Ministers and the European Commission where you
do not just get inter-departmental rivalry, you get something
deeper and bigger than that—the gulf has been a bigger one
to cross. What I think is impressive that I have seen in the last
couple of years are increasingly conscious efforts being made
to cross that gulf, partly with the idea of the External Action
Service in mind, the understanding that many people are going
to be working in a quite different institutional context and they
have been trying to prepare themselves for that. I think you get
inter-departmental rivalry within the Commission, if you like;
you get something else between the Commission and the Council
of Ministers which of course also reflects that they are recruited
in very different ways as well.
Q31 Lord Anderson of Swansea: Mr
Smith, you speak of increasingly conscious efforts within the
European Union to bridge the gulf. You have spoken also of a greater
coherence in EU policy. I would like to examine with you how this
is reflected in EU policies to other actors on the world stage.
Clearly the EU has a series of strategic partners; each of those
partners has fairly similar interests in terms of climate change
and other matters and the impact on their own external policies
be it countries or international organisations, the UN (you have
already mentioned) and Lord Hannay's High-Level Panel and NATO.
To what extent in your judgment has this increasing internal cohesion
within the EU impacted on its strategic relationships with other
countries and on those with other international organisations?
I recall that the US Security Strategy appeared at about the same
time as the earlier EU one; presumably there will not be a new
US Strategy until the new administration is in place, but do you
know about the inter-relationships between the planners and others
within the EU and within the National Security Council, the State
and the Department of Defense? How much effort is there made to
align where possible the security objectives of US and the EU?
Mr Smith: I think if you were trying
to do that now, that sort of alignment, it would be an extremely
puzzling task to try to take on. I think you have to call the
result of the November election, put all of your money on that
horse and hope that the thing comes in. The document like the
National Security Strategy that was announced in the US in 2002
is really a very political document and the drafting of that is
led from a very high level and done with very close aides working
on it and trusted advisers and so on. So it would be the group
which is most closely around the leaders of the national security
team of whichever is the new administration who would be the key
people to be relating to there. In terms of the first question
it is very important to make a distinction between coherence within
the EU institutions and coherence that also includes the EU Member
States. What often holds the EU back from being a coherent actor
is not positions or policies which are being taken within the
Commission or any dispute that there might or might not be between
the Commission and the Council of Ministers; it is that the Member
States, which are all sovereign states with their own interests
and their own policies, have got to cobble together some kind
of a compromise, or come to a great understanding with deep vision
and profound foresight for moving forward on very, very complex
and difficult issues. My hunch is that if you look at the more
high profile issues you will tend to have a pretty poor estimate
of EU coherence and if you look at the less high profile issues
your assessment of EU coherence would become a little bit rosier.
In various contexts in countries where we are working we would
certainly see the European Commission delegation as being part
of a pretty coherent group of western donor governments that is
primarily the EU Member States plus, for example, Norway and Switzerland
(one or two which are close to EU on a lot of policies and issues).
I think we would see quite considerable coherence there and we
would see that as helping in the relationship between those players
and, for example, the US and/or the UN. The way in which this
plays out will be different in different places and to some extent
it all also depends on personalities. However, when these things
are below the level of concern that is going to get the headlines
in the European newspapers and the questions in Parliament and
the real active, engaged interest from the foreign minister or
the prime minister, it is actually then sometimes a lot easier
to identify coherent actions going ahead. There are these two
levels and I am not saying that one is more important than the
other; I am simply suggesting that they are different and that
in the more high profile cases you get more varied interests coming
into play and it is therefore necessarily harder to achieve coherence.
On some of the more low profile questions people and institutions
are very often more pragmatic and therefore you get more coherence.
Q32 Lord Anderson of Swansea: Certainly
on the low profile ones you have mentioned, presumably the fact
of the External Action Service can only help in improving implementation
on the ground.
Mr Smith: Yes, that would be my assessment
as well; it can only help.
Q33 Chairman: The Brussels development
of the External Action Service would mean that you would not have
separate desk officers in the Council and in the Commission working
on these sorts of issues.
Mr Smith: That is right. I do think it
is true that coherence begins at home and the EU's coherence with
other actors therefore begins in internal coherence.
Q34 Lord Hannay of Chiswick: Could
I take up a completely different issue which is the public perception
of these security strategies in the United States, in Europe and
indeed nationally here at home, but particularly between the first
two of those? In the United States the national security doctrine
is a pretty high profile document which gets debated at every
political level, it gets debated around the country, arouses enormous
press interest and so on. The European Security Strategy, if you
went out into the streets and asked people if they had heard about
it they would all say they had not. If you asked a lot of people
in government if they had heard about it most of them would say
they had not. How on earth are we to set about shifting the situation
so that a document like the European Security Strategy—which
is to be revisited at the end of this year—becomes something
that people discuss seriously, not just between people like us
here and you in your NGO activities who obviously take it seriously
and know a great deal about it? How do we move that debate out
so that people have some understanding of it? The Council actually
produced an excellent European Security Strategy in booklet form;
I have never seen anyone who has it except me.
Mr Smith: I presume the vast difference
arises because everyone understands that the USA is an important
actor in world affairs and that case is much less easy to make
about the EU for, amongst others, some of the reasons that we
have been talking about this morning. I think that in a way the
answer to your question is that as the process of thinking through
the Security Strategy and linking that to the formation of the
External Action Service begins to produce an EU which is more
often than it has been in the past a significant actor on key
world issues, then the importance of that will rise. However,
while the EU remains, as I am more or less presuming it will for
the rest of my conscious period on this planet, an alliance—albeit
a very close one—of sovereign states, there is always going
to be a difference between what the EU is capable of doing and
what a single state of that population and wealth would be capable
of doing. People will react to that accordingly. It may be that
in the context of the External Action Service, with the movement
forward of the European Security Strategy, it becomes a slightly
larger circle of people who know what that Security Strategy is
but I doubt that if you ask a random person on the street they
will quickly tell you and will have an opinion about it because
I do not think the EU will ever be a European equivalent of the
United States of America.
Q35 Chairman: Mr Smith, thank you
very much indeed for coming and answering our questions this morning.
As I said at the beginning, you are our first witness and this
is the very beginning of our thinking about this issue. It has
been very helpful to have you and cover the whole ground so comprehensively.
We are really very grateful.
Mr Smith: Thank you very much for the
opportunity.
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