Defence and Security Review (NATO) — House of Commons, 2015-03-02
Topic: Defense
Crispin Jeremy Rupert Blunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I only hope that the speech I am about to make can begin to get close to the excellent contributions we have heard from hon. Members from all parts of the House—it really has been an excellent debate. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon) that the speech by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) was extremely instructive, and I want to take it as my starting point, because it is essential that we identify what our role in the world is. We have avoided doing that ever since the end of the cold war and we have tried to fudge things. We are now living with the price of trying to "punch above our weight". That may have sounded sensible when Douglas Hurd said it 20 years ago, but 20 years later, after all the conflicts that have happened in between, we have been left with the consequences: the tactical and strategic failure in Basra and in Helmand, where we simply were not prepared to commit sufficiently in order to carry out the military operation and deliver the political objective by the military means we put to it The hon. Lady threw down the challenge: what is our role in the world to be? I am an unashamed dove; it is my belief that our continuing aspirations to play some great power role in the world is a conceit, and a misleading and expensive one. So in the terms she put it, I am looking at greater Denmark and a mercantile policy to support British interests around the world. From that base, my conclusions ought to be instructive, although I understand that many of my right hon. and hon. Friends come from a different place The world has significantly changed since the end of the cold war. I would be the first to defend the peace dividend referred to by the hon. Member for York Central (Sir Hugh Bayley), pointing out the drop in defence expenditure after the end of the cold war. Absolutely the right thing to do in the circumstances of the time was to take those savings and reduce the defence budget from 3.5% of GDP when I was a soldier to 2.5% by 1997. But what has happened since then to Russia and what is now happening with ISIS and the rise of Islamic fascism—there is also the open question of China and its role in the world to consider, but this is particularly about the first two things—should give us serious pause for thought Churchill said in October 1939: "I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma" Knowing that my historian friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson), is with us, we should point out that Churchill went on to make a prediction in that statement, saying: "I will proclaim tonight my conviction that the second great fact of the first month of the war is that Hitler, and all that Hitler stands for, have been and are being warned off the east and the southeast of Europe." That was triumphantly wrong. What should give us real pause for thought is what is happening in Russia now. If ever there was a wake-up moment, it is not just Crimea and what the Russians are doing in Ukraine; it was the murder of Boris Nemtsov last Friday night and the fact that only a few tens of thousands of people went on to the streets of Moscow. What happened there was the dying gasp of liberal Russia. We have seen the same thing before; it was what Mussolini did to his opponents in fascist Italy. The alarming thing is the popular support that Putin enjoys—the statistics were given again by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston. He is a popular ruler and one in difficulty, which is why he is exploring the execution of power in the way he has been doing. That has taken us away from where we would have hoped Russia would have been, within the family of nations and with the basic agreements of how to conduct international diplomacy Alongside Russia, we face the rise of Islamic fascism. That is now on a scale far beyond the consequences of 9/11 and the activities of al-Qaeda; ground is now being occupied. We would do well to remember just how attractive an ideology fascism was, and in its guise as Islamic fascism it is proving attractive to members of our own population and to people from around the region, who are flocking in vast numbers, alarmingly, to put their lives on the line to support it. We underestimate the nationalist popularity of Putin’s strategy and Russia, and ISIS and the images it presents, at our peril. That means we now have to take these threats extremely seriously I wish to focus now on what posture we should take. Having said that I do not want the United Kingdom to play a great power role but a more limited role, it is absolutely right that we face up to our responsibilities as a partner in NATO, which is what this debate is about. I understand the politics behind the 2% figure: we need to get NATO expenditure to a level that is at least rising for most of its members. However, 2% is an artificial number and, given the threats that we face now, it is inadequate. Whether we are aspiring to play a great power role or to pursue a mercantile role with no imperial pretensions, our strategic posture as the United Kingdom is woefully insufficient. The moment that we lost the maritime patrol aircraft from the strategic defence and security review at the beginning of this Parliament was the moment that we ceased to have the right suite of powers and intelligence capability to hang together. We have acquired the aircraft carriers and we will eventually acquire the aircraft to go on them, so we will have some status there, but we need to work out how they will form part of our strategy I come back now to the decision that we face in 2016, to which the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) referred. He complained about the lack of Astute submarines, but we are committed to programme expenditure worth some £109 billion with the renewal of Trident. I have been very impressed by the new report from CentreForum about retiring Trident and looking for an alternative proposal. It demolishes the case for the Trident alternatives review, saying that it was based on a false premise. We need to look at the idea of going back to a free-fall bomb. [Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) wants to intervene, I will happily give way.