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Armed Forces: US Missile Defence

My Lords, we owe a debt of gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, for enabling us to debate an extremely important matter. I will not repeat the interesting points that he made about how this system evolved, nor will I address the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, save to express some surprise at his great concern over sovereignty in this matter. The issue of sovereignty in the matter of collaboration with the United States over defence has not been a real problem for the great majority of us for a very long while. I personally do not see any difference between what is now proposed in terms of sovereignty and what has been happening for a long while. I believe that the debate about missile defence must be seen in the historical context of modern warfare. For this purpose, I define the start of modern warfare as the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in August 1945. It must also be seen in the context of missile offence, and on this I suppose history goes back a year earlier, to September 1944, when Hitler launched his V2 rockets on London. Indeed, if one is talking about the essence of modern warfare technologically, one sees that the crucial development was that of radar, by Sir Robert Watson-Watt, which took place in Suffolk, near where I live, in 1938 and which arrived just in time to save Britain in the battle against the Luftwaffe. There is still much criticism of the American atomic attack on Japan. One of my early schoolboy memories is hearing the Emperor of Japan, translated on the radio, denouncing the use of this ““new and most cruel”” weapon. Even as a juvenile, I thought it strange for the Japanese to be denouncing cruelty. The attack did of course end the war within days. Had the nuclear weapon not been used then, I believe that it would have been used later, probably between nuclear powers—in other words, it would not have been a one-sided matter—with far more devastating results. The point that I am making is that, once used, the reality of nuclear warfare has meant that it has never been used again. It had to be used to demonstrate the science fact. Otherwise, it would have remained science fiction, which would never have been as effective a deterrent. The missile defence system entered the big league of international affairs in June 1983, when President Reagan announced the Strategic Defence Initiative, or Star Wars. In March 1985, Gorbachev took over as Soviet leader. Between then and October 1986, when at the Reykjavik summit Reagan offered a world free of nuclear weapons—an offer that in my view fortunately foundered on the Star Wars complications—the Soviets must at some time have come to the conclusion that they could not negate the American SDI without a level of expenditure that Gorbachev recognised as unacceptable to the Russian people. At any rate, within five years the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, in June 1991. By the end of that year, Yeltsin had succeeded Gorbachev and dissolved the Soviet Union, thus ending the Cold War. Now we have had the Government’s Trident White Paper of December 2006, with a £15 billion to £20 billion plan for the replacement of that weapons system, which was approved by the House of Commons last March. Meanwhile, the issues that we are debating today concern collaboration with the USA for its National Missile Defence system. We all know that the prospects of stability in the world are vanishing rapidly. It is not just that there is a frightening lack of world leadership. So many world leaders, including some leaders of the great powers, are either weak in their home bases, deeply flawed or on their way out. Furthermore, the influence of the great powers has declined. Tragically for the world, the United States seems to have used its military power to diminish its world influence. There is also a growing number of failed states, where a combination of economic incompetence, corruption, internal conflicts, external attacks, political anarchy and repressive regimes has created intolerable conditions for local populations. The uncompromising threat of fundamentalist Islamicism, which has overtly transferred itself from a religion into a political ideology, is growing. In the Middle East, the price of peace seems to be higher than the cost of conflict, especially given the cash flow from the high oil prices, which contribute to that regional turbulence. Indeed, the price of oil is partly a function of the regional turbulence. In whose interest, therefore, is the regional turbulence? The likelihood of nuclear proliferation is growing. It is probably safer to use military technology to counter it, if it happens, than military force to prevent it, because nuclear weapons remain unusable, as they have been since August 1945. I believe that we can be reasonably confident that no state that has even the semblance of a diversity of power will use them. None the less, we must have the best defence against them. For those reasons, I strongly support the principle of ballistic missile defence in Europe. There are important obligations on the Government. First, they must keep Parliament properly and fully informed. Many of these issues are not state secrets. The decisions made must and should depend on the feedback from the people in a parliamentary democracy. Secondly, they must ensure that we have the financial resources to meet any commitments. I have said before that the Government have to choose between providing the resources to meet their military commitments and adjusting their military commitments to their resources. At present they are doing neither. Let us be aware that the economic prospects mean that the cash flow from taxation over the coming years will look pretty sick. The fact remains that we are dependent on the United States for our key defence technologies. That is why I believe that we were silly to embark on competitive technologies such as the EU Galileo system, which duplicates the American navigational satellite system. Its design and development are costing the UK Government €142 million, with a further £2.3 billion for Europe as a whole for deployment and initial operation of the system up to 2013. That was ill considered indeed. The Government must answer other questions, too. Are interceptor missiles, as well as the method of detecting missile attacks, to be stationed in the United Kingdom? I am very unclear about where we are on that and we must debate it. We will not necessarily all agree, but this must not be done surreptitiously. We have heard about the enormous scale of Menwith Hill from the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire. I had not realised what a huge operation it is. It is important that local people should be consulted on the implications for them. Then there are the potential benefits for British business in developing these new systems. The world outlook is bleak. Never have we more needed a competent Government of integrity. Let us hope that we soon get one.