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NATO Summit

With permission, I should like to make a statement on the NATO summit in Riga, which I attended in support of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. Before going further, I should stress that there was overwhelming consensus among the leaders of the 26 NATO countries on the crucial importance of strong collective defence to meet the security challenges of the 21st century. They reaffirmed NATO’s central role in defending our countries and our common values. The UK had three priorities for the Riga summit: ensuring success in NATO’s military operations, notably in Afghanistan; improving NATO’s expeditionary capability; and improving NATO’s ability to work more closely with civilian partner organisations and the rest of the international community. I am pleased to report that, despite the complexity of some of those issues, and some genuine and legitimate differences of approach between member countries, real progress was achieved in all three areas. The primary focus of the summit was NATO’s current operations. Today, more than 50,000 NATO personnel are deployed in six missions on three continents. More than half of them—32,000—are in Afghanistan, which remains NATO’s top priority. All 26 NATO member states reconfirmed their commitment to the mission. There was a shared recognition that success in Afghanistan is crucial not just for the Afghan people and for regional and global security, but for NATO itself. As the Prime Minister has said, now that NATO has taken on this vital but challenging mission, its credibility is at stake. The summit offered an opportunity to take stock of progress in Afghanistan, particularly since 2003 when NATO took on the mission, in the form of the international security assistance force—ISAF. In place of the despotic rule of the Taliban, the country now has a democratic Government. The economy is growing, and infrastructure and basic services are being rebuilt. At last, after 30 years of conflict, the everyday lives of millions of Afghans are visibly improving. According to UN figures, 4.5 million refugees have returned to rebuild their lives. Of course, at the same time, the mission faces serious challenges. The Taliban and the drug lords are determined to fight to resist progress and they continue to exploit the impunity they have enjoyed in the south. ISAF forces have seen hard fighting over the summer and have taken significant casualties, but they faced down the Taliban and reinforced the Afghan Government in extending legitimate governance and the rule of law throughout the country. We know that some member countries have had reservations about the mission. Their domestic audiences have been concerned about the intensity of the fighting and have raised questions about the prospects for success, but even after this difficult summer everyone at Riga agreed that the mission in Afghanistan has to succeed. We should not underestimate the significance, at this moment, of all member countries explicitly reaffirming their support for the mission and their common pledge to provide ISAF with the forces and flexibility to ensure the continued success of this vital mission. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister led calls for our allies to reconsider how they might do more to provide such forces and flexibility. There was a welcome signal from a number of nations that they would lift the national caveats on the use of their forces. There were also pledges of additional force contributions. I cannot give full details today; Members will have seen reports in the press, but we must wait for national Governments to confirm those commitments in due course. The pledges made at Riga are a small step in the context of a 32,000-strong mission when the ideal, as I have been impressing on my NATO opposite numbers for months, is that there should be no national caveats at all—something that I am proud to say is true of our 6,000 personnel in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, we should acknowledge that even if those are small steps, they are steps in the right direction. Before Riga, the Secretary-General estimated that 85 per cent. of ISAF’s force requirements had been met; that has now risen to 90 per cent. and we must continue to work until we reach 100 per cent. We must also continue to work on the wider challenge of transforming NATO. The threat facing NATO members has changed dramatically since the alliance was formed in 1949. There is agreement that NATO must transform its capabilities to meet the challenges of a changing world. We must become more agile and more efficient. That is easy to say in theory, but harder to achieve in practice in the context of an alliance of 26 countries each with its own approach and its own sovereignty. There are signs of progress, however. Yesterday, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe declared the NATO response force fully operational. The NRF was established following the 2002 summit to provide a high-readiness force able to deploy quickly where required, to carry out the full range of alliance missions. That is a key development. Even before the force reached full operating capability it showed its worth, in the relief effort following the Pakistan earthquake last year. We also agreed new initiatives to increase the strategic airlift available to allies, to enhance co-operation between our special forces, to improve alliance logistics support and to streamline the NATO command structure. Of course, as I have said countless times from this Dispatch Box, success in the type of operation NATO is now undertaking will not be achieved by military means alone. That is especially clear in Afghanistan. The international community needs to work in a co-ordinated way across all the different lines of operation—security, governance, law and order, reconstruction and development, and counter-narcotics—to deliver a truly comprehensive approach. That comprehensive approach is not unique to Afghanistan. It is equally important in Kosovo where KFOR has been crucial not just in maintaining security but in supporting the political process. Such an approach will be needed in the majority of operations the international community undertakes in future. NATO cannot do the work of supporting governance and development by itself; nor should it. We have to improve the way we work with organisations such as the United Nations, the European Union, non-governmental organisations and national Governments who provide civilian capability. Yesterday, we agreed to develop new proposals for improving civil-military partnerships throughout all stages of operations, from planning to execution on the ground. NATO does not and should not pretend to be the sole means of creating and maintaining security. The civilians and military working in places such Afghanistan or Kosovo are working for the same aims; it is not a zero-sum game, where support for the UN or the EU is a defeat for NATO or vice versa. Many commentators feared that the summit in Riga would be a waste of time and at worst a failure. Those fears were unfounded. The summit reaffirmed the strength of purpose within the alliance and its commitment to remain a force for good in the 21st century. NATO is not perfect. It needs to prepare for tomorrow’s challenges while continuing to adapt to today’s operational needs. It has started the process of transformation and it is the responsibility of all of us, individually and collectively, to support that process. In protecting our security and our vital interests, there is no alternative to working within international organisations, and over the past 50 years NATO has proved itself to be one of the best we have. It deserves our continuing loyalty and support.