National Security and Russia — House of Commons, 2018-03-26
Topic: International Affairs
Robert William Henry Seely (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) Without sounding too dramatic, the most important thing that we can do is to avoid conflict with the Russian Federation. Everything that I say is predicated on that simple point. It is also predicated on the fact that our adversary is the Kremlin, not the Russian people. Having said that, I will focus in my brief speech on three things, which are that we need to accept, to understand and to act First, we need to accept that we are in a new cold war with the Russians. I know that some people do not like using that term, but I think that it is valid and honest. We need to accept that President Putin is trying to undermine the current state system, that he is trying to break it, and that he may well try for a more aggressive gamble in his final term. When we have troops on the Russian border ourselves, it is complacent to say that there is not a potential existential threat—and I say that with great respect to those who have argued against that point Secondly, we need to understand. We need to understand the nature of Russia’s new warfare and, in general, the global threat that authoritarian states now pose to free societies Thirdly, we need to act, not in a shouty, finger-pointing, stick-waving kind of way, but in a consistent and robust manner. We need to relearn the art of deterrence and, frankly, the art of strategy We are in a new cold war. The definition of a cold war is a state of political hostility between countries that is characterised by threats, propaganda and other measures short of open war. This is not the cold war, but it is a cold war. It has probably been ongoing—although we have not wanted to recognise it—since about 2007, it was probably announced by President Putin in his Munich security speech and it has probably been in the planning since 2000. But those who were in Moldova, Georgia or such places in the early 1990s, as I was, would have seen the initial revisionist push by the Russian state or by elements within the security services—siloviki—back in the late 1990s as the Soviet Union was collapsing Hybrid war is one of, I think, about 25 terms that have been used thus far. It is broadly a sophisticated and integrated form of state control based on multiple forms of state power, used in a highly co-ordinated and coercive fashion. It is basically the old active measures of KGB warfare—disinformation, proxy political and armed groups, and assassinations—around which have been gathered the full spectrum of state power. The research that I have been doing in the past few years shows that there are least 50 tools. Indeed, the first characteristic of Russian contemporary warfare is what Russia calls the integrated use of military and non-military tools What we see as hybrid war—trolls, hackers and gangsters, although we get the Bear bombers so there is a military aspect as well—is the useable element of a full spectrum that includes nuclear weapons, nuclear theory and conventional weapons, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) mentioned earlier. It is important for us—especially people who are not favourable to this argument—to note that many, although not all, of the Zapad western exercises conducted every year end with a nuclear strike. Now, as anyone who has participated in military exercises knows, they are not planned for fantasy scenarios. They are planned for the most likely or the most dangerous course of action. If the Russians plan the use of nuclear strikes on cities in eastern Europe as a gambit or a tactic, one has to take that seriously. They are not doing it for a laugh; they are doing it because they are testing and looking at options Russian power tools can be divided into six: politics and political violence; governance; economics and energy; military power; diplomacy and public outreach; information and narrative warfare. That is all wrapped around command and control, which in our world is surprisingly short and goes up to Putin in not very many stages. That is rare compared to the west, where there is an endless chain of brigade, division, command and control before it gets to a political level. This is a highly political—Clausewitzian, I think, is the term—form of warfare We need to act. Russian warfare is holistic and full spectrum. Our response should be too. On top of the good things that this Government have already done, I echo the point made by the hon. Member for Bridgend that we need a commission. Back in the 1980s, the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence did wonderful work, methodically exposing Russian disinformation. We need Parliament or the Government to establish a working group or organisation of some kind with a UK and global remit to look ruthlessly into Russian full-spectrum warfare and expose it. We can then tell our own people what we are doing. We can tell the Greeks, people in Cyprus and people in France. We can tell the world. This is important. I have suggested this before and it would be wonderful to get some traction with the Secretary of State On the financial authorities stuff, we should just adopt Transparency International’s list, but I will not touch that because I know that we are doing good work there. Let us introduce a named list for agents of Russian influence in the UK, including Members of the House of Lords, some of whom I understand have been working for some very questionable oligarchs The US is this week bringing in a counter-propaganda Bill that puts a health warning on authoritarian broadcasters operating in the west. We need that. The Russians may well respond in kind. I do not care. We need to protect our democracy and our elections. The time to realise that our elections are being meddled with is not mid-way through a campaign; it is before.