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Foreign Policy

My Lords, I respectfully agree that we ignore the religious dimension in our foreign policy formulation and objectives at our peril. Like previous speakers, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, on providing such an excellent platform for the debate. My only criticism is that, so far as I recall, the only mention of the European Union was as a potential threat to our Diplomatic Service, and I follow rather more the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, who invites us to follow the advice of the Oracle at Delphi to know ourselves and our capacities, and perhaps the words of Robert Burns: "““to see ourselves as others see us””—" not as some nostalgic sepia-tinted vision of the past. The noble Lord invited us to examine the new challenges which face us in foreign policy. In my judgment, to appreciate those challenges we need to understand the context in which we are likely to operate over the next 10 and 20 years and the instruments available to us and our allies. However, first, there should be a word of caution about predictions. The joy of forecasting is that it is very fallible; by contrast, hindsight gives us 20:20 vision, and a look back over the past 20 years would show, first, that 20 years ago the Berlin Wall was still there and many would not have forecast its fall. Since then, there has been not only the fall of the Soviet Union, but many of its empire’s former members and even parts of the former Soviet Union are now in the European Union and NATO. Again, 10 years ago there were rather naïve assumptions that Russia would be just like us and become a western-style democracy. Since then, an amendment has been moved, as we say, that although Russia is part of the Council of Europe, we saw the new and more aggressive style under Putin from about 2003-04. Again, eight years ago, we had not had the World Trade Centre bombing; 9/11 coloured the world perceptions of the threat of Islamic fundamentalism and the US self-perception as being invulnerable on its own territory—hence, the ““war on terror””, the ““axis of evil”” and the distortion which followed in US foreign policy which, I hope, will be modified under President Obama. Perhaps the last of those elements which would give the forecasters a certain humility is what happened in the past year or two in respect of the bursting of the bubble in the world financial system, whether that started from Lehman Brothers or, even earlier, sub-prime mortgages, and the effect that the crisis is likely to have not only on western capitalism— which was affected alone, perhaps, in the 1930s’ depression—but the whole world. That was a word of caution. With due hesitation, I ask: what challenges are likely to face us as we proceed during the next five, 10 or 20 years? There appears to be reasonable consensus among the forecasters and the thinktankers. This is hardly surprising, because these people swim in the same goldfish bowl and advise the same groups. For example, the excellent report by the United States National Intelligence Council, published last November, Global Trends, drew very heavily on the think tanks in Europe and around the world; it is as though they were the same people who advised the European Union on strategy or who wrote the French white paper on defence. The NIC reports certain relative certainties and certain key uncertainties. Its analysis of trends, and hence challenges, which other forecasts, as I said, replicate, talks of the rise of India and China by 2025; of the relative power of non-state actors; of the shift in relative wealth and world power from West to East, and of the US becoming less dominant and a first among equals. It talks of continued economic growth—with a question mark—putting pressure on energy, food and water, and about the increasing potential for conflict. The key uncertainties are energy security, the effect of climate change, whether mercantilism protectionism will stage a comeback, the effect of a nuclear-armed Iran, and whether stability can be achieved in the greater Middle East. The European security strategy that I mentioned, published last autumn, follows that same trend, as does the excellent French white paper on defence. I looked for a similar UK paper; the nearest I found was the FCO White Paper on UK international priorities that was published three years ago in March 2006. The 2003 White Paper promised us that the Government had committed themselves to a review every two years, to ensure that foreign policy remained relevant and kept up with the pace of change. Well, three years have passed, and it would be helpful to learn from my noble friend when we might have that FCO contribution. In this consensus, we will clearly have a changed context. Perhaps the major omission is the insufficient emphasis given to world population and its effects on conflicts. I think, for example, of the Rwanda genocide: was it 800,000 or a million people killed in that bloodbath between March and June 1994? That was essentially a conflict over land between the Hutu and the Tutsi. The problems in Kenya two years ago between the Luo and other tribes were, again, largely about population and land. In only 80 years, the Kenyan population has gone from 2.9 million to 37 million. On the violence in Gaza, in 1950 its population was 240,000: it is now 1.5 million and will soon move to 2.2 million. With that sort of increase, how can one seek to provide education and health for those young people, and prevent them becoming so radicalised? Something can yet be done. The Arab populations in the West Bank and in Israel proper do not have that same population boom. If the challenges have been identified, what sort of instruments do we have? It has been mentioned that, globally, the United Nations and, indeed, the whole post-Second World War institutional framework needs to be examined—and I pay tribute here to the work of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and his colleagues on the high-level panel, about which relatively little has been done since—as does, clearly, the regional level of western organisations. NATO is now 60 years old and needs a new strategic concept. For the UK, I concede that the initiative of President Medvedev at Evian on the new European security architecture fits ill with the Georgia invasion, but should not be dismissed out of hand. The particular challenge for us is to balance our links with the United States, our closest bilateral relationship, with membership of the European Union. Pace the Daily Mail, the US ambassador to NATO recently said that, "““the US needs, the UK needs, NATO needs, the democratic world needs a stronger, more capable European defence capacity. An ESDP with only soft power is not enough””." Yesterday, I was at Northwood and saw the first naval EU operation, Atalanta. It was under the command of a British admiral, which is light-years away from that suspicion of the EU one hears so often from the other side. I shall end on this note. I recently met a member of Kadima in Israel. She was sitting alongside Mr Netanyahu, their likely next Prime Minister, and told him that it had taken four years for her party to reach that point of recognition which Israel had to reach on an accommodation with a two-state solution. If the Opposition get into power, will we have to wait a similar time for recognition of the fact that the European Union is our key partner, that we share the same broad objectives over most of the ground and that, day-to-day, we are reaching common positions with our European partners over world issues? That is the reality if we seek to know ourselves, and to move realistically to the future.