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Foreign Policy

My Lords, this has been a wide-ranging debate and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, for providing us with the opportunity to have it. He knows, as does the House, that I greatly admire his intellect, although I have great difficulty in coming to terms with his pessimism. The noble Lord is in danger of becoming a kind of reverse Mr Micawber—always hoping that nothing will turn up. None the less, I thank him and all other noble Lords for their expert participation. The debate could not take place outside a wider framework. As my noble friend Lord Anderson said, we have to be utterly realistic about a rather longer period. So let us take a moment to rememberthe world between 1990 and 1997. In west Africa,Iraq and Afghanistan brutal regimes defied the international community and continued to rampage, with destruction, devastation and despair being spread and, as my noble friend Lord Soley said, the emergence of unstable entities, without adequate intervention of any kind. During the first Gulf War, Saddam was left in power, murdering the Marsh Arabs and the Kurds. The problems were never resolved. Next door, no serious relationship was achieved with Iran and its fundamentalist conservatives. The problem was never resolved. No progress was made on the Middle East. On our own doorstep, the Balkans were a genocidal horror zone, while the international community, fractured and incoherent, tried to solve the situation with declarations and resolutions. As my noble friend Lord Anderson also reminded us, Nelson Mandela was denounced as a terrorist. The United Kingdom pursued a policy of regret, condemnation and concern—words and gestures—but very little was achieved. Africa went backwards and we simply lost touch with Latin America, as has been pointed out in the debate, except, of course, we kept in touch with General Pinochet. It is candidly hard to think of a significant initiative directed at China or India, let alone Brazil or Mexico. In Europe we became like a grumbling, distant relative. Since 1997 we have replaced this neglect with activism and we try to do what is right. Some of the dictators are behind bars; some, I am pleased to say, are facing justice in international tribunals. Mynoble friend Lady Symons described the path of engagement that is necessary to do this work. She,of course, has to be acknowledged as a centralauthor of the work during this 10-year period. Her analysis of the past 10 years was particularly powerful, as it was based on experience and knowledge. The Balkans are firmly on a path of stabilisation, mutual co-operation and economic reform, which will lead towards membership of a peaceful, democratic European Union. The Blair Chicago speech set out what this broad path would be. I am very pleased that my noble friend Lord Giddens took us through the consequences of that speech. Of course the world still contains troubled areas, but we no longer sit on the sidelines wringing our hands. We are actively seeking to build security and better societies in Sierra Leone, in Afghanistan, in Kosovo and, with all its difficulties, in Iraq. We have been at the forefront of every effort to bring peace to the Middle East region. We provide huge sums for the peace process and we work for the road map. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, at least in this respect: we must do so with new energy, and engaging the United States is essential. Because I am well aware of the work that my noble friend Lady Symons did as Minister for the Middle East, I know that these are not easy tasks; no one has cracked them easily on any side of the House or in any party that has had the privilege of forming a Government. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, that we shall look at Ed Balls’s proposals on the economic issues but I cannot accept the noble Lord’s analysis of Hamas. Its democratic credentials and attitude to peace, as we look at them today, seem to me to fall very far short of international standards. The noble Lord’s description of them is surprising, if I may put it that way. The FCO itself has crystallised the UK’s values into key priorities, and 10 years on, there is less conflict in the world, less poverty and more wealth. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, was right to remind us that ending conflict sometimes entails conflict and that there is a cost but that we should always proceed under the umbrella of the international institutions, particularly the United Nations. Back in 1997, the United Kingdom was still trying to rediscover its international role. I want to be fair to noble Lords who served in successive Conservative Governments. The world was changing rapidly, and coming to terms with it was always difficult. As the Berlin Wall fell the very engine of globalisation, with markets opening and the advent of the internet, revved up to revolutionise the way we connected with foreign lands. During this time globalisation pulled every nation of the world and all the institutions in its wake. The Government acknowledged the reality of interdependency to make sense of these forces, to shape them and to exploit them to the greatest possible extent. We are all still on the high tide of constant change and we always will be. The noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Swynnerton, made some important points but against this background I suspect that no modern British Prime Minister has ever been disinterested enough in foreign affairs to leave those matters to his Foreign Secretary. Indeed, some senior politicians in the previous Government complained that the Prime Ministerhad been known to take their cricket bat away and break it. We have pursued a policy of the deepest engagement with the international community and have built a firm platform to take forward this country’s global objectives. Our standing is high. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, referred to the standing of our forces. I agree with him, but I am not so certain that the distinction between conflicts of choice and other conflicts is quite so clear-cut. International stability is sometimes the only choice, and our forces are not failing us in dealing with that. The international institutions were built for the post-war era. That era has gone. They need to reform to be fit for the world in which we now live—the world after 9/11, the introduction of the internet and the Cold War. I refer to the changes that the noble Lord, Lord Luce, so eloquently set out. Perhaps all the key institutions have the creaking joints of middle age but they are none the less vital for global order, so we work persistently for optimal reform. Some Members of the House have more or less said that the Iraq conflict has destroyed the international community’s instinct to intervene on the right occasions. But as my noble friend Lord Desai put it, the alternative to intervention is leaving matters unresolved, however dire they are. The responsibility to protect calls us to do something better. My noble friend Lord Soley underlined the same point. I simply cannot agree with the comments of my noble friend Lady Turner on Iraq and Kosovo precisely for that reason. Some have a touching, perhaps even naïve, faith in the international community. It has its limitations and does not always succeed, and constructive criticism can be considered condemnation, although in my mind it is not. Others believe that it is neither possible nor desirable for the United Nations or the European Union to be a leading global actor. Some pay lip service to it but do not really rate its chances of being successful. Others advocate not only a more active Commonwealth but a greatly enlarged one, with an economic and security role, as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, advocated with the greatest clarity in a very important paper at the end of last year. However, I believe that, for all its great strengths and adequacies, such a Commonwealth would probably be beyond its capacity, traditions or its current architecture. But we certainly should not neglect the Commonwealth—I do not intend to do so—or the Overseas Territories. The very important points of the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, on that are taken to heart. The work for modern constitutions to help the Overseas Territories move forward is really important. There is high expenditure. Examples such as Montserrat tell people that we have certainly not neglected our obligations, even where they constitute a hugely expensive enterprise. We buy into the Latin America strategy that the noble Baroness and the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, both mentioned precisely because we can get buy-in now across Whitehall, and that is a change. Our approach is clear sighted. I hope that it is constructive. We want the UN, the European Union, NATO and the Bretton Woods bodies to provide strong, effective leadership on all the global issues. We have had some successes. Kofi Annan proposed a fundamental programme of reform in 2005. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, was one of its architects. We work to make that a reality. My noble friend Lady Quin reminds us that the EU summit is under way, where more construction will be considered. As I said last week in our long and serious debate, a national discussion about the results of that will be imperative. I hope that it will be conducted in the media and elsewhere with more thought and less frenzy. The Fundamental Charter may be thought by some to intrude on our legal and security needs to too great an extent, but we shall see how this debate emerges in the next week. For 30 years, successive British Prime Ministers have claimed that Britain is at the heart of Europe. I believe that the Government have gone further. We have moved the heart of Europe closer to Britain. Our vision is shared by an increasing number of European states, and more are hungry to join. Jose Manuel Barroso said earlier this year, in a speech that my noble friend Lord Anderson quoted, that the Europe of the 21st century takes its inspiration in many ways from Britain. I contrast that—we are looking at a historical period here—with what another president of the Commission, Jacques Santer, said in 1996.He said: "““You are right in asking whether some people are suggesting that Europe would be better off without Britain””." Over 10 years we have kept our old friends and made new ones, as my noble friend Lady Symons made very clear. People talk of the international community as if it were some kind of kindergarten—the UK can’t be friends with Europe if it wants to stay friends with America, and we may not be invited to the Commonwealth party if we go to somebody else’s party in Europe. In 1997 we saw that that was the diplomacy of the past. In 1997 the days of the triple alliances and the ententes had long passed, but I am afraid that the mentality lingers on, and it has notyet grasped interdependence as fully and broadly asit must. This country can maintain a strategic partnership with the United States while engaging meaningfully with the Commonwealth and Europe. We have a proper regard for the significance of our alliance with the United States, and I shall not apologise for it. It is the world’s only super-power, whoever its president may be. We have shown that we can work with President Clinton and President Bush and their Administrations and that the relationship has remained important, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said it must. My noble friend Lord Anderson had that right. The world benefits from this alliance. It is a close partnership. I shall be candid: our approaches will differ many times on issues such as climate change; but when we work at it, as we did with the G8, we sometimes get the right result. On other occasions our partnership has stood us in very good stead, and we should not forget it. I fear that the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, and others suggested—although I am sure that they will tell me that I misheard the point—that we can switch—