Libya

My Lords, I imagine that I speak for many people on both sides of this Chamber when I say that, for all the hesitations that I might have had at the outset about our involvement in Libya, now that our forces are engaged alongside our allies I totally support this operation. Like all of us, I pray for the lives of our very gallant service men and women and for the success of our arms. I thank the Government for giving us the opportunity to have this debate today and for essentially offering to listen to what Parliament has to say before important decisions are taken. I want to comment on three of the potential decisions that are coming up in the short term and then make another set of observations about the wider picture in the medium and longer term. I am not one of those who believe that we have to have a Security Council resolution whenever we take military action anywhere. I do not believe that at all. However, it is important that, having gone to all the trouble that we have gone to and having used up our credibility in the United Nations and the Security Council to get these two resolutions, we observe the maximum good faith in complying with them. Therefore, it is absolutely clear that we should follow the spirit as well as the letter of 1973 and not deploy ground troops in Libya. I have many reasons for not wanting to deploy ground troops. First, there are the practical difficulties, including the difficulty in extracting them and the complications that a ground campaign always involves. It is clear to me that we should take that view of the meaning of the resolution. Certainly anything more than the rapid insertion and extraction of Special Forces, if they are needed for some special operation, should not be contemplated. Secondly, for the same reason, we have to take a clear view that the resolution bans the sale or provision of arms to anybody in Libya, so the idea of arming rebels must be out of the question. There are good practical reasons for not doing that, particularly if you do not know much about who these people are and to what use these weapons might ultimately be put in future years. That should be completely excluded. Thirdly, there should be no question of our targeting Colonel Gaddafi. I deplore the remarks of the Secretary of State for Defence in the media when he implied that he thought that the UN resolutions were at least a cover or excuse for targeting Gaddafi. They are nothing of the kind. Again, it would be extremely damaging to our position in the United Nations and in the world if we were to breach the spirit of the resolutions in that way. It would be bad for the standing of the western world as a whole if it appeared that we were arrogating to ourselves the right to eliminate or assassinate any leaders of third-world countries whom we wanted to remove. It must be rather humiliating that the Secretary of State was contradicted and corrected on the radio the next morning by the Chief of the Defence Staff on that important matter. Looking at the wider picture and the medium and longer term, I am not someone who believes in the concept of active, ethical foreign policies or liberal interventionism, as it is often called. One can always make a strong moral argument for intervention anywhere in the world to try to save lives or to help people; the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, with his usual eloquence, made a strong case for that this morning. Other motives also come into play. Unfortunately, such operations seem to have a fatal attraction for a certain type of Prime Minister as an ego trip but, whether the motives are very pure and very good or less pure and less good, we should exert a degree of self-discipline and use our arms quite strictly to defend ourselves and our allies when they are attacked, or in the necessary defence of our vital interests. We should be quite clear about that. I have three reasons for saying that, two of which are permanent and long-standing and one of which is related to the present situation and conjuncture. The first of these is often given, so I need not dwell on it: it is almost impossible to predict in advance how a military operation will develop. There are always enormous risks in any kind of intervention. One can easily find oneself welcomed on day one as a liberator and then spat at or shot at only a month later as an unwanted invader. In the enthusiasm or moral conviction of the moment, it is easy to underestimate the risk of such operations. My second reason, which is a strong one, is that a moral foreign policy almost certainly becomes a contradiction in terms. You get no moral credit for a moral foreign policy, nor can you. You are absolutely bound to end up in all kinds of contradictions and inconsistencies, which immediately undermines any ethical or moral conviction that you might wish to project. We are involved in Libya at present but, as has been said, why not in Ivory Coast, where there is an equally strong or an even greater case for humanitarian intervention? Why not in Zimbabwe or Somalia, or the Congo, where millions of people have been killed in civil wars over the past 20 years? Would we intervene in China to defend Tibet against destruction? The answer is clearly and obviously no. Immediately one is involved in these contradictions. I have not been in the Middle East in the past two weeks, but I am absolutely certain that there must be many people there saying today, ““Why is it that the West is supporting democracy in Libya against Gaddafi but not supporting democracy in Bahrain against the Khalifa Government?””. In answer to that, they say, ““Ah, the Khalifa Government are the pawns of the West. They are the allies and friends of the West and Gaddafi is their enemy””. Ultimately, you end up with a reputation not merely for selfishness, which you get if you have a policy simply based on your own self-interest, but also for duplicity and hypocrisy, which is not helpful. One has to impose a certain self-denying ordinance on oneself for those reasons. Unfortunately, there is a specific reason today why we should take a very restricted view of the extent to which we can extend our overseas military commitments. This Government, since they came to power some 10 months ago, have seriously eroded our defence capability. In just a few months, they have destroyed our maritime surveillance capability. They have decommissioned the Nimrod aircraft. They have got rid of battle tanks and helicopters. I am told that 10 of the 22 Chinooks that I ordered are being cancelled. Most horrific of all, they have decommissioned the Harriers and got rid of our carrier strike capability, a capability that could be very useful at the present time in Libya. When I denounced this decision a couple of months ago as short-termist and irresponsible, little did I think that within a few weeks we would live to regret it. Those Harriers could have been enormously valuable to us to support the operations on which we are now launched. I fear that everything that I am hearing is that the coalition Government are determined to go on with these defence cuts, that this is not the end of the story and that they regard the defence budget as a kind of milk cow so that they can continue to get more and more money. I hope that it is a consolation for the pilots who have been laid off and for our defence forces that the Government see fit to give £200 million a year to India, which is twice what would have been required to maintain our own carrier strike capability. India is increasing its defence spending by more than 6 per cent per annum and is building up a carrier strike capability of its own. In my view, this is a disastrous policy. To extend our commitments while reducing our resources seems to me to be the very essence of irresponsibility and recklessness. The Government must understand that, if they wish to will the end, they must will the means.