The Path to Power

STRONG DEFENCE

These four principles have one thing, above all, in common: they can only be given effect by a fifth principle of strong defence. The same arguments which Ronald Reagan and I used during the 1980s still apply. Defence spending is an investment in peace because it is not armaments of themselves which cause wars: wars arise because potential aggressors believe they have sufficient military superiority to succeed in their aggression. Such investment has to go on year after year, even when threats seem vague or remote, because high-technology defence programmes only yield results over a lengthy period. And the only ‘peace dividend’ we have a right to expect from victory in the Cold War is peace itself — rather than the opportunity to spend more on welfare benefits and the dependency culture.

Admittedly, it was right that Western countries should reexamine their defence spending as a result of the dramatic changes which flowed from the fall of communist Eastern Europe, the ending of the Warsaw Pact and finally the disintegration of the Soviet Union. But I now believe that the plans for reduced spending which were announced when I was Prime Minister as Options for Change went too far; subsequent announcements have, of course, gone further still. Personally, I did not share all the optimism which characterized political discussion of defence at that time. But I did overestimate the rate of likely progress in turning the Soviet Union (or Russia) into an ‘ordinary country’, a stable liberal democracy which posed no special threat to the West.

We cannot know whether Russia will ultimately go in the direction of democracy and free enterprise. If Russia were to embark on a course of restoring the old Soviet Union as a new Russian Empire this could not happen peacefully. Nor could it leave Russian relations with the West unchanged. In any event, it would clearly be against our strategic interests if Russian power were once again to move close to the heart of Europe. Similarly, Russia’s commitment of scarce resources to any such imperial strategy would inevitably mean abandonment of the continuing tasks of economic reform and political liberalism. We could thus expect both external and internal policies to revert towards those of the old USSR. And Russia is still a formidable military power.

Already, the various crises and disarray which affected the countries of the former Soviet Union have resulted in a large outflow of advanced weaponry, which was then eagerly acquired by other rogue powers, further increasing the threats we face. Clearly, the West must maintain its defences.

Since 1989/90 it has not been possible to base our defence calculations almost exclusively on assessment of the threat from just one direction — the USSR and the Warsaw Pact. That necessarily makes the task a good deal more complicated. In such circumstances, the temptations are great for politicians to try to balance the different lobbies rather than to take a long-term strategic view of likely threats and the required response. A further difficulty has been that it is not just Britain but also the United States, France, Germany and Italy which have been cutting back. Those in a position to know now claim that even if we had the front-line equipment to intervene where required, there would be big problems in supporting and supplying it. Combined with the unsatisfactory outcomes of UN-authorized interventions, these cutbacks have given the impression of a weakness of resolve and commitment.

Another element of uncertainty has concerned the future role of NATO. As I have suggested, it was right and necessary for this to be re-assessed. In particular, the political impact of NATO as a force for stabilization and strengthening transatlantic links had to be more fully exploited and developed. This has not, however, occurred as I envisaged. In particular, partly as a result of federalist impulses in Europe and partly as a result of different approaches over Bosnia, NATO is no longer satisfactorily fulfilling the crucial task of sustaining American commitment to Europe’s defence. Indeed, NATO itself has been seriously undermined.

NATO should also have welcomed the Central European countries — Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia — into full membership, as they requested. Combined with the European Community’s slow and hesitant approach to bringing those countries in as full EC members, NATO’s decision has come as a blow to the pro-Western democratic forces in the region. Partnership for Peace, which treats a country like Poland as having the same relationship with the West as, say, a member state of the former Soviet Union like Kazakhstan, only serves to confuse the degree of commitment NATO is making. The fact that NATO has allowed Russia — or more precisely the anti-Western influences in Russia — to determine its decisions on this matter is all the more serious. It does Moscow’s democrats no good to bend in this way, because it suggests that those who threaten are more likely to be listened to than those who cooperate.

Expanding NATO would be more than a military move. It would confirm the independent and ‘European’ status of the Central European states. Even countries, like Ukraine and probably the Baltic states, which would not (initially at least) be on the right side of the ‘line’ that NATO would draw on its eastern border, have now lost out. It has been well argued that ‘merely having NATO close at hand… would affect the political psychology in the belt of states between the Baltic and the Black Seas, imparting more confidence to their liberal political forces’.[89] All these developments would have tended to put European peace on a much sounder footing.

They are all the more desirable because the Gulf War demonstrated something which I had already believed necessary — namely that NATO forces must be able to operate ‘out of area’.[90] The range of potential serious threats is now truly global. That does not mean that NATO forces should be deployed whenever some local crisis in a far-flung country occurs. But it does mean that major regional threats must concern us. Some potentially serious risks are already apparent.

And where there is a clear case of aggression and our interests are involved, military interventions, whether under UN, NATO or other auspices, should be strong, swift and effective. Objectives must be clear, risks weighed and as far as possible countered and the resources deployed sufficient. Of course, every international crisis is different. Rules have to be adapted to circumstances. But the temptations to guard against are always the same — namely, ill-thought-out goals, too much reliance on total consensus before action, and the use of insufficient force.

Unfortunately, in their different ways all the major military interventions carried out under UN authority since the end of the Cold War have suffered from some or all of these problems. The Gulf War left Saddam Hussein in power with sufficient weapons and resources to terrorize the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs and continue to test the international community’s resolve. This crucial misjudgement was principally the result of a lack of clarity about objectives and excessive emphasis given to the search for international agreement rather than victory. But at least Desert Storm was effective in ensuring that Iraq yielded up Kuwait.

As I have suggested earlier, in spite of the personal qualities and, on occasion, the heroism of some of those involved, little can be said in praise of the international intervention in the former Yugoslavia. The justification for intervention was at least as clear as in the case of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. A well- armed aggressor — Serbia initially acting under the institutional guise of Yugoslavia — attacked first Slovenia, then Croatia and finally Bosnia. But what should have been a clear policy of arming the victim and assisting him with air strikes on military targets was distorted into a peacekeeping and humanitarian venture.

This policy was an illusion. There was no peace to keep. Hence the humanitarian force would either fail to aid the victims or come into conflict with the aggressors. A Western diplomacy that forswore effective military action had no real power to force an aggressor to negotiate seriously, and an arms embargo, impartially applied, meant in effect intervening on the side of a well-armed aggressor against an ill-armed victim. In fact, there is hardly a moral principle or a practical rule which has not been broken in handling this crisis: it should at least provide the next generation of statesmen with a case study of what not to do.

Was it shame at events in Bosnia and Croatia which prompted the UN, under American leadership, to intervene in Somalia in December 1992? No one could criticize the humane impulse to step in and relieve the appalling suffering created by — what was in this case accurately described as — civil war. But insufficient attention was given to the political and military problems involved. It soon became clear that the humanitarian effort could not enjoy long-term success without a return to civil order. But there seemed no internal force able to supply this.

Hence, the intervention created its own painful choice: either the UN would make Somalia into a colony and spend decades engaged in ‘nation-building’, or the UN forces would withdraw in due course and Somalia revert to its prior anarchy. In the former case, since the Americans have no taste for imperial ventures, the UN