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Armed Forces

My Lords, we all recognise that we are discussing an extremely serious subject. The noble Lord, Lord King, in introducing it referred to the condolences, which we all offer, to the families of our troops who are killed and injured in action. We recognise how many of them are currently deployed and how hard stretched they are. I want to follow the noble Lord in taking as my text the Prime Minister’s speech on HMS ““Albion”” on 12 January and marking, as he did, some of the assumptions of that speech. The Prime Minister stated that our defence and foreign policy should be, "““governed as much by values as interests””," and that we further our values as well as, "““our interests in the modern era of globalisation and interdependence””." He went on to state: "““The new frontiers for our security are global … with no immediate threat to our territory, in environments and in ways unfamiliar to," our troops. He pointed out that our troops, "““will usually fight alongside other nations, in alliance with them””." He referred to two major alliances—with the United States and Europe—and said that our troops will fight, "““notably, but probably not exclusively with the USA””." He concluded by saying: "““The covenant between Armed Forces, Government and people has to be renewed””." There are some very major themes there about why British forces are deployed so widely in the world, what their responsibilities are and the nature of the covenant between our Armed Forces and the public. On Tuesday I was engaged in launching a book on just war, called The Price of Peace, which is a joint exercise between the Archbishops’ Council and the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales. We addressed the question of the obligation to use force, the other side of just war: how far does one need to accept and share responsibilities for global order and what is the responsibility to protect? Our Prime Minister, from his Chicago speech onwards, has taken our responsibilities very broadly. As he said in Chicago: "““We have to think about the use of armed force as an imperfect instrument for righting humanitarian distress””." He has made it clear that that is an obligation which we share with other countries all over the world. But how much responsibility should Britain take, and with whom? Mr Blair has made it clear that he sees our responsibilities as exercised primarily with the United States and, secondly, with out European partners—not very much, incidentally, with the United Nations. I think I am right in saying that at the moment the Chinese have more troops on UN peacekeeping operations than the United Kingdom. I have some doubts about the evolving discussion in the United States about the changing role of NATO and the extent to which the United States now sees NATO as a global alliance that shoulders the burden of maintaining global order as a sort of modernised white man’s burden, with the Japanese, the Australians, New Zealanders and others. We have to question the extent to which the burden of world order is one to which we should be co-opting the Chinese, the Indians and others within a strengthened and reformed United Nations, and to question what the future role of NATO should be. The noble Lord, Lord King, referred to Options for Change, the first post-Cold War defence review. I was reading last weekend Simon Jenkins’s splendid book Thatcher and Sons in which he notes that the 1982 defence review, the Conservatives’ first defence review, had intended to reduce our defence ambitions down to those of a moderately sized European country, but the implications of that review had been blown out of the water by the Falklands, and, in effect, since then we have never got back to accepting how we needto be more modest and more moderate in our aspirations. In 1997-98, this Government conducted a defence review that attempted to address some of those questions but that, oddly, entirely left out the European dimension. Some months afterwards, the Prime Minister, on his own initiative, launched a major European defence initiative with the French into which a number of British generals, officials and others had put a great deal of effort. I am constantly struck as I talk to people from other Defence Ministries and other European armed forces by their references to the positive British contribution to the building of the recent Nordic battle group, the co-operation with the Germans, the Dutch, the Danes, the Swedes and others. Nothing of that appears in the British press because the Faustian bargain between the Government and the Murdoch press is one in which the positive contribution that the Dutch and the Germans are making in Afghanistan, and that the Swedes and the Danes made in our operation in Congo et cetera, is not convenient to address. We now need a 2008 defence review, and on a cross-party consultative basis in order to promote consensus for public support on the role we are asking our Armed Forces to fulfil. It has to be a more modest role because no Chancellor from any party is going to support a significant spending increase and we have to work within those limits. Let me move rapidly on to the question of the military covenant. I note, incidentally, that the Army doctrine publication talks about the military covenant as the mutual obligation, "““between the nation, the Army and each individual soldier””." It goes on to say: "““It has perhaps its greatest manifestation in the annual commemoration of Armistice Day, when the nation keeps covenant with those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, giving their lives in action””." I faced some hostility some weeks ago when I raised the question of whether we needed to rethink how we commemorate Armistice Day to link in with what our Armed Forces are now doing. We need to think through how we connect what our Armed Forces are doing today with how we present their contribution to the nation—to the public. We all recognise the ambiguities with which our Armed Forces now have to cope—what an American Marine general called the three-block war, in which troops find themselves providing humanitarian aid, enforcing the peace, and then sometimes being involved in direct, hard combat within a few blocks of the same occupied city. We also recognise the weakening of the links between the forces and society, 50 years from the end of conscription and national service, with shrinking reserves and part-timers, with the Armed Forces having a preference for long-term engagement of a larger number of younger people moving through our forces on short-term engagement, and with the rising proportion of non-British soldiers in our Army—now just over 5 per cent, from Nepal, Fiji and a range of other Commonwealth countries. Others will address the conditions for our Armed Forces, and I hope the changing and much more complex legal framework under conditions of instant communications, interventions from human rights groups and much larger media coverage. Perhaps some will touch on the political exploitation of our Armed Forces through active media management; it is always good for Prime Ministers and Defence Ministers to appear with ““our boys”” in good photo opportunities. If we are to rebuild public support and understanding, we need to rebuild the military covenant. A Lords sessional committee might usefully address the question of the Armed Forces’ links with the public and the political class. Many in the Armed Forces have argued that the covenant is close to breaking; perhaps we should address how best to rebuild it.