Debate on the Address

I am sure that we will all eagerly read Hansard to see what their lordships are allowed to hear about the unfolding nature of policy. However, I think I would guarantee that policy will be different in December from what it is today. I agree with the hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate that events are moving in America where the whole issue is being extremely vigorously debated. Policy is shifting in the light of the results of the mid-term elections, which, on Iraqi grounds at least, I greatly welcomed. I also share the view of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Devizes. I have no confidence that any British input into the process is being taken as seriously as it should be. Even I do not know what British foreign policy is so far as pending changes are concerned. The Prime Minister had one hour of video conferencing with the Baker Iraq Study Group. I suspect that he did that because he was conscious of the fact that it might appear at home that he had no influence on events if he did not do so. However, I suspect that his impact on the workings of the Baker group will be absolutely minimal. It is quite obvious that British policy at the moment is to wait for President Bush to explain to us how we are all going to get our troops out of the country. It also seems to me that President Bush is waiting for James Baker and his study group to come up with some new idea that might get the troops out in a way that minimises the President’s loss of face. That is the underlying situation that gives me no confidence at all that a satisfactory result will be achieved. I have the highest regard for James Baker; I am delighted to see him in the frame and Donald Rumsfeld out. However, James Baker is faced with an almost impossible task given the events of the past three and a half years. The two things coming out most fashionably from the discussions going on are, first, that the way forward means a closer involvement of Syria and Iran and, secondly, that policy must now move to a phased withdrawal. Both sound attractive, but they are the haziest notions of an unworked-out policy, and I shall comment on both of them and express some of my doubts. The involvement of Syria and Iran—and I would add a number of other middle eastern players who are looking anxiously at what is happening in Iraq—would have been a very good idea had we involved them at a very much earlier stage. When we first got involved with the problems of Iraq, it was obvious, as many people have said, that, once we had changed the regime, no future for that country on its own could be secured until it was on terms with its neighbours. Looking again to the future, it is absolutely essential that the accommodation between Iraq, Syria and Iran one day resumes some sort of normality. I fear that it is very difficult to expect very much at the moment of Iran and Syria. That is not surprising when we look back and consider the original intention of the neo-Conservatives when the invasion took place. It was explained to me quite frequently by more than one of them that Syria would be forced to come into line with western policy because it would be subjected to shock and awe when it saw what had happened to its Ba’athist neighbour. I was also told that the Iranian regime would be changed in a matter of months as the brave students of Iran rose in response to an American show of power in the region and that they would put a new friendly regime in place. To make the speech that the Prime Minister did a couple of weeks ago that encouraged hopes that we would now receive some help from those two regimes to assist us to get out of Iraq with dignity seems to me a triumph of hope over recent experience. Both regimes have been immensely strengthened by the events of the past three years, not least because the whole illusion of the unbeatable supremacy of the United States and its allies has unfortunately been swept away by what has happened in Iraq. If those regimes are really asked for help, they will of course try to negotiate a price and some of the prices are obvious—a free hand for Syria in Lebanon and nuclear weapons for Iran. I am relieved to say that every American and every member of our Government who I have ever heard deal with the issue has ruled those out as utterly unacceptable. They are prices that we cannot pay. However, Syria and Iran know that they are now going to play a great part anyway in future events in Iraq. They have been placed by our invasion in a situation in which they can do that. Syria will not resist intervening in the affairs of its neighbour, particularly given the Sunni contingent there, and Iran, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea has eloquently pointed out, is the real victor of the whole invasion. I cannot believe that anybody in Iran ever expected that the ““great Satan”” would crush and defeat Iran’s great rival in the area —Saddam Hussein in Iraq—and put Shi’a militias in a powerful role all over the southern half of Iraq with command over a great deal of its oil reserves. I am afraid that it will be very difficult to induce Iran to put on the top of its agenda in Iraq helping the Americans and the British to get out with dignity. That will not score high. When the Prime Minister in his speech tried to explain how Iran would be given a stark choice, he threatened the Iranians with isolation. They are quite capable of living with that and I do not think it is quite enough to induce them to become involved. My right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea tried to produce some carrots and sticks with a little more credibility, but they would both agree that we are trying to make bricks without straw. It is difficult to place too much hope in this approach. A phased withdrawal is plainly what we must now move to with great urgency, but it is difficult to see what that means. I agree with everyone who has said that we cannot just pull out now. The present chaos would turn into a period of even more terrible bloodshed with a totally uncertain outcome, although unless we get back in control of events, there may eventually be no alternative. It is pointless to set a timetable that would become a timetable for terrorist activity, but phased withdrawal must mean quicker withdrawal on an altogether shorter time scale than we have been given. That means that we must brace ourselves for very much reduced expectations of what we will leave behind. Stability is the most that we can achieve, but we will not control its exact nature. All those plans for imposing a friendly democracy are, alas, an illusion, because we have failed to achieve the principal objectives of our policy. Until we do have a quicker withdrawal, we are in serious danger in Afghanistan, where we cannot commit ourselves fully. We have gone into a dangerous area without our NATO allies. We do not have a clear strategy. What we need now is a debate on what the strategy is—