Debate on the Address

I will be blunt: we have spent the past decade umbilically linked to the foreign policy of two American Presidents, and it is time that we had our own British foreign policy once again. In the past five years, the world has changed significantly, particularly in one regard: although the United States is still immensely powerful, her aura of invincibility died in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan. There are now other powers and other challenges, and other forces, such as China, India and Russia, are emerging. That makes redundant the simplistic Bush-Blair analysis of the world, with its view of good versus bad, and democracy against the axis of evil. As a result, the age of hard power is making way for the soft power of dialogue and diplomacy, and our foreign and military strategies need to reflect that. We, along with the United States, are playing the wrong game by the wrong rules at the wrong time, and we need to cut the umbilical link between our Prime Minister and the United States President. That means that we should come home from Iraq. In Afghanistan, we should pull out of Helmand and concentrate once again on the central area around Kabul. As part of reviving the middle east process, we should start to talk not just to Syria, but to Hamas and Hezbollah. Talk of staying in Iraq"““until the job is done””—[Official Report, 18 October 2006; Vol. 450, c. 867.]" has become meaningless. We are told that that would prevent chaos, but what, if not chaos, stalks the streets of Iraq today? According to the Iraqi Government, 150,000 Iraqis have been killed since 2003, and according to the United Nations, 3,700 people were killed in October alone this year. We are told that staying in Iraq would mean winning Iraqi hearts and minds, yet neighbourhoods are now too hostile for us to enter. The Prime Minister defines ““the job”” as defeating terrorism, yet there was no terrorism in Iraq until we went there, and it is there now because the absence of the promised comprehensive reconstruction plan created a vacuum into which the terrorists surged. What the Government really mean by when ““the job is done”” is when the United States President decides, for whatever reason, to bring American troops home, but it is wrong for the safety of British troops to be held hostage to that. I value immensely our partnership with America, but we must never confuse partnership with unquestioning compliance. We have been in Iraq for three and a half difficult years, and during that time we have achieved much of which we can be proud, but we are becoming part of the problem. Our brave troops in Iraq have done everything that we have asked of them and more. It is time, with honour and dignity, to bring them home. The best hope for a stable Iraq is a focus that is not quasi-colonial—that is the situation now—but regional. James Baker is right: Iranian and Syrian involvement may not achieve our original aim, but it has a better chance of bringing order and cohesion than anything that we can hope to do. The situation in Afghanistan is hard, too. In military terms, it is, in the long term, unwinnable, so we have to change our approach. Unlike Iraq, we cannot simply come home, as to do so would reopen the door to the Taliban and al-Qaeda and their international terrorism. However, we should not be in Helmand. As the House knows, we went there on a false prospectus. The best chance of stabilising Afghanistan is from the centre. If we look at history, we see that pacification from the outside has never worked. We need to rebuild confidence in Kabul and in the central area. We must effectively undermine the warlords and drug barons who hold the Afghan farmers in hock—that is the hold that they have over the farmers; the issue is not just the poppy. We must offer the people of Afghanistan better incomes and better lives, and we must abandon the conceit that Afghanistan is a task for the west alone. India, China and the ““stans”” all have a direct interest in a balanced, non-fundamentalist Afghanistan, and we should seek to involve them. There is the tragedy of Israel and the Palestinians to consider, too. I fully understand Israel’s need for, and right to, security, but it will never be achieved by blowing up, rather than building, bridges, or by building, rather than pulling down, walls. Walls may protect in the short term, but in the longer term they divide and inflame. Our recent history should have taught us that, if nothing else. The abiding goal must be a secure Israel and an autonomous Palestine, living peacefully alongside each other. We, as friends of both, can help to build confidence between them and their neighbours, not least in Lebanon. Last summer’s war, and the destruction and human suffering that accompanied it, has made that much more difficult, and the situation has become much tenser. The tragic assassination of Pierre Gemayel inevitably made that tension much worse, as it clearly was intended to do. There are those who simply do not want a peaceful middle east, but for all our sakes they must not be allowed to succeed. We should listen to the brave words of Mr. Gemayel’s father, who last night called for peace and prayer in place of violence. There is a new urgency to rebuild trust. I long for the people of Israel to achieve the peace and stability that their history owes them but has never delivered. I long, too, for the Palestinians to achieve a recognition of their rights, which has too often been denied to them; the two are not mutually exclusive. A new opening narrative is needed, one in which the real concerns, grievances and aspirations of people on all sides are acknowledged and, if not agreed, at least respected. That narrative would become the backdrop against which positive dialogue can begin. The old road map is dead, and its timelines are part of history. In any event, its lack of flexibility was obstructive. A new process must be initiated, and a genuine ceasefire, fully observed by all sides, is a necessary precursor. That itself should be preceded by the freeing of those on all sides who are improperly detained. The new process should include all those who must play a part in securing a two-state solution in a stable middle east. Prospects of renewed engagement with Syria are therefore welcome, but ““inclusion”” must mean Hamas and Hezbollah, too. For better or worse, Hamas is the democratically elected majority party in the Palestinian Authority, and Hezbollah is a significant part of the democratic structure of Lebanon. There can be no viable Palestinian state without the participation of Hamas, and there can be no secure Israel without an enduring peace agreement with Lebanon, including Hezbollah. Clearly, Israel cannot, at this time, engage with those who use terror to threaten her people, her security, and indeed her very existence, but others can and should do so. Iraq, Afghanistan and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have a common theme, which the Foreign Secretary touched on in her speech. In each case, military action may contain terrorism, but it will not, in the long run, defeat it. Fighting must give way to talking, and our country has a role to play in that. That is why we once again need a British foreign policy.