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Queen's Speech

My Lords, going through the gracious Address, I discovered that there was comparatively little about our defence policy. Although one could agree, at least in part, with much of the noble Baroness’s opening speech, I feel that we should concentrate slightly more on the demands on our defence forces at the moment and what they are going to do in their immediate objectives. We have got ourselves into a situation in which we are in Afghanistan on a long military campaign that looks like it is going to go on for a lot longer. Unless we direct our military thinking at what is primarily required in that major conflict, we will be in danger—at least in the majority of our efforts—of getting things horribly wrong. I am not saying that we can find a totally military solution but, if we fail there militarily, there will be virtually no room for a diplomatic solution, which is in our interests. We have to square up to that. If the Taliban were allowed to drive back the British forces and their Afghan force allies or defeat them in the field, the consequences would be almost beyond calculation. Therefore, we must concentrate our thinking and procurement on what is required there. If we do not, we will be in danger of falling into the trap of asking, ““What if?””. It is often said that generals are always tremendously well prepared to fight the last war, but they might be accused of lacking what might be called hindsight in dealing with the immediate problems that confront them. They need to think about how to win the current war, and a commitment to channelling all our procurement, training and support practices to the troops in the field now is required. We must look at our structuring programme and support our troops in facing the immediate problems. If we can achieve some form of military dominance and suppression of the Taliban—because total victory is almost certainly impossible—then the job of the diplomats will become much easier. We must at least hold sufficient ground to force the Taliban to the table. That is essential. To that effect, it would be interesting to hear exactly how far into the future we expect long-term planning for our troops currently on the ground to go. For example, are we going to look at restructuring the way in which our Armed Forces are deployed in the immediate future? Are we considering the fact that we may have to shift away from traditional types of deployment and organisation to deal exclusively with Afghan-type problems? Is consideration being given to the possibility of mothballing some weapons systems which were designed for other types of conflict in order to deal with this one problem? Another question is how to deploy the available troops. The noble Baroness said that overstretch was not a problem but we are still a long way from harmony, with the correct amount of rest between tours of duty that was initially recommended. Will that be a medium or long-term objective for our Armed Forces? If we assume that the situation in Iraq allows us to withdraw our troops, how long will it be before they are sufficiently rested to be at maximum efficiency? It has been suggested to me that that could take several years. I move on to one of the other aspects raised in the Queen’s Speech—the situation with Iran and Iran’s nuclear programme. Will the Government try to encourage the new American Administration to think twice about putting emphasis on things such as missile defence and, instead, once again allow the diplomats to become involved? I doubt very much whether the people of Iran, even with their most bellicose leaders, have a suicidal urge to attack the United States or its immediate allies with nuclear weapons. The US and its allies would be quite capable of retaliating to a point where Iranian society would cease to exist. Are we going to encourage our most powerful ally to try talking to Iran in an attempt to stop its people feeling so frightened and threatened that they indulge in a suicidal arms escalation in the area which they cannot conceivably win? It would not be impossible, even with conventional weapons, to destroy that country as it currently exists. Can we look at that issue? There is also the fact that missile defence has this wonderful aspect where one can say, ““Oh, we are all safe now””, then we just press a button and it goes away. It is a few months since I did any heavy reading on this, but basically the assumption was that we might just get any missiles that are coming, provided that there are not too many of them. So there is an escalation factor. When it comes to inspiring fear and illogical responses, there are people who seem to be quite happy at being frightening and bellicose. The current Russian regime seems to enjoy being frightened and intimidated by the deployment of weapon systems. It may be true that the missiles placed in Poland and the Czech Republic would be incapable of stopping weapons striking from the former Soviet Union, but the principle is there. Are we getting ourselves into an escalation of threat, which means that we are crowding out the space for diplomacy? Surely, any action to which we are party must allow for that space for diplomacy, whether it is action on the ground or the potential placing of weapons. Let us remember that if Iran decides to commit effective suicide on a national level, it does not have to launch a missile; it need only put a nuclear device on a ship and sail it to the American coast or, indeed, our coast. I am sure that they are quite capable of understanding that. Unless we are prepared to sink every ship in the sea—I will not comment on Somali pirates now—we cannot defend ourselves long term by simply having that sort of system in place. It can always be flooded by more missiles or simply circumvented by another form of delivery. I shall be interested in the Government’s response. First, will we take on board in our entire procurement and training instruction, at least for the Army, that an efficient operation and successful outcome in Afghanistan is our primary objective? Secondly, are we prepared to step back to give Iran a chance to step back as well? Allowing that country to back down with good grace is the best outcome that we could conceivably have.