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Armed Forces: US Missile Defence

My Lords, I too pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire for securing this debate. It is a sad reflection on parliamentary accountability that the Opposition have to use their time on debates of this matter of national and international significance, which should in any event be discussed in Parliament, on the back of a serious and meaningful dialogue within the whole country. I am not a defence expert so will not go into the scientific arguments of ballistic missile defence, or the merits of these new hit-to-kill systems. My concern is with why the UK has nailed its colours to yet another American mast, of something that I regret is again sailing in the wrong direction, and what this means for international peace and security. I am of a privileged generation which, had I grown up in the West, would have seen and taken for granted peace throughout my life. In fact, I lived in a part of the world, south Asia, where my father actively served in two of three wars in a space of just over 15 years. I witnessed on television the speech by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto at the United Nations, stating that Pakistan’s citizens—of which I was one—would eat grass in order to secure their safety from India. This was in the context of developing nuclear weapons. Oddly enough, he had massive support for this and Pakistan’s development was compromised in order for its military-industrial complex to be able to boast of its ranking as a nuclear power. I subsequently lived in the Middle East and experienced the Israeli invasion of Lebanon first-hand. Conflict, at all levels, has been part of the calculation of international relations in my experience. My noble friend Lord Wallace spoke at some length about the damage this US project has done and will continue to do to the international system. The window of opportunity we saw in the early 1990s, when it appeared that the permanent members of the Security Council could work together, has passed. What we have seen since the late 1990s has been a slow, steady decline of multilateralism in all fields, whether you are talking about trade, good governance and democracy, conflict prevention or security. The danger of this decline is evident. Those of us who take an interest in the Middle East have long despaired of Israel’s unilateralism, usually accompanied with silence from the US, and increasingly from the United Kingdom, too—most recently witnessed in the execution of the air war against Lebanon in 2006. In a region which has seen wars in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982 and 2006—I may have forgotten one or two—the heightened sense of insecurity on all sides calls for powerful nations to be even more careful about nuclear proliferation. At minimum, some restraint on one’s own capabilities is required, if one is a superpower. Yet there are consequences of unilateralism in a wider context, too. To take the case of Pakistan, of which we have heard a lot in the last few weeks, the strategic long-term question about US and UK support for the military there is founded on the view that the military being in control of the nukes is preferable to the mullahs being in control of them. We also understand from press reports that, should the military be driven from power, contingency plans are in place for the US to guarantee surgical strikes against Pakistan's capabilities, to eliminate the threat. The informed view in Pakistan is that these operations will be undertaken by India by proxy, if the US does not move first. The death, destruction and future conflict that either of these scenarios would unleash bears some reflection. Given these contexts, it does not seem entirely surprising that states which feel threatened, and which have seen the lessons of unilateralism go unpunished, are prepared to go their own way. We have seen the US move away from the diplomatic track to one of identification of states that are allies and dangerous rogue states—those that are not allies but must be tolerated and factored into the equation, such as China and Russia. This was set out in the 2001 National Intelligence Council’s report on missile threats in 1999, and formed the background to the current strategy. It was supposedly on this basis that President Bush set out his strategy on the new need for a more ambitious National Missile Defence system, which would address all potential threat scenarios. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Powell of Bayswater, is not in his place at the moment. He defended US developments vis-à-vis Russia and Russia’s capabilities. Yet the House of Commons Library briefing Ballistic Missile Defence: Recent Developments talks about that estimate from the National Intelligence Council. About Russia, it states: "““Unless Moscow significantly increases funding for its strategic forces, the Russian arsenal will decline to less than 2000 warheads by 2015—with or without arms control ... Although Russia still maintains the most comprehensive ballistic missile force capable of reaching the United States, structure decisions resulting from resource problems, program development failures, weapon system aging, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and arms control treaties have resulted in a steep decline in Russian strategic nuclear forces over the last 10 years””." That is the Americans saying so, let alone anyone else. In that report, the threats that were initially identified were expected to be from a group of rogue states—North Korea, Libya, Iraq and Iran, as my noble friend Lord Wallace said. We know that diplomacy has been successful in the case of the first two: nuclear weapons have been negotiated away. The third, Iraq, to the extent that it was a threat at all, has been bombed away, which leaves Iran, and we know that the national intelligence estimate of a few weeks ago has cast serious doubt about Iran’s capability—in the near future at least. With Iran as the sole so-called rogue state which might at some future point be able to target other Middle Eastern states, one cannot see the case for a US defence system to be based on the European mainland, in Poland, the Czech Republic or the UK, as current scenario planning envisages. That leads one to suspect, as Russia does, that the National Missile Defence system is of broader strategic value with other aims than those publicly stated. The stoking-up of fear of Iran has other consequences too, where other countries in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and Egypt—the former with historical antagonism towards Iran—calculate that unilateralism pays. They calculate that sanctions against US allies that indulge in proliferation will go unpunished, as we have seen in the cases of Israel, India and Pakistan. Hence those two states may well assume that the United States, in proceeding with missile defence, is prepared to sanction the development of nuclear weapons in their case too. Several nuclear armed states in the Middle East will not further the cause of peace and security in the region. I turn to our Government’s enthusiasm for this project. As many noble Lords have pointed out, we are told that the missile shield is meant to offer wider protection across Europe. That assumption disregards the slightly more immediate and realistic scenario: that if WMD are to be used, they will be used by non-state actors through international terrorism. The shield will not protect against that. Apart from the evident loss of sovereignty and the danger of increased nuclear proliferation, there is a further symbolic aspect: our role as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. We are still seen—less so after the Iraq war—as a moderating and balancing power which, due to its historic connections in most parts of the world, can sometimes play a restraining hand. What appears to be our uncritical engagement with this project will diminish that role. That will have a cost beyond the tenure of this Government to the security of future generations. I conclude with some thoughts from the Guardian leader of 24 February 2007. It states: "““The idea that Britain should offer to house the new anti-ballistic missiles which the United States wants to base in Europe is on the far side of folly ... if you are thinking of a legacy to the nation, should it be to dig holes in the ground for weapons that will not work and whose successors are also unlikely to work? ... If there were a real threat it would be a different matter, but the proposed European anti-ballistic-missile shield is not a response to a threat but the product of twisted thinking in Washington””." The leader concludes: "““Washington is ignoring the reality that if a real threat did arise from the Middle East, it would be best dealt with by cooperative military arrangements between the West and Russia, and possibly China as well, working together to operate a joint missile shield””." I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure the House that the Government for whom she speaks will reflect on this debate.