My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and this will entail major strategic rethinking, not so much by Britain, but by the rest of Europe.
We have to recognise that this is a difficult time for Germany, which is hugely dependent on Russia for its energy supplies and exports. Angela Merkel is making the right noises, but her still fragile economic recovery can ill afford the volatility arising from sanction plans, and we must help Germany as much as we can. In a strange way, this may be moment of truth for Germany. In the post-war years, it has held back on major security and defence issues, but this saga is a wake-up call, not just for Germany but for all of Europe and its strategy. Russia will not hesitate to use its energy assets as a tool of foreign policy. It did it in Georgia, and we see it again in Ukraine today. Europe must now work towards reducing its dependency on Russia for its energy supplies, and building those pipelines passing to the south of Russia should be a priority.
Secondly, Europe must reverse its downward trend in defence expenditure. Some NATO partners have virtually no defence capacity whatsoever. Crimea may not be of any direct strategic significance to us, but how we deal with this crisis has serious geopolitical implications. So let us speak in a language that Russia understands. We may not go to war over Ukraine, but the Baltic states, which gained independence from the Soviets with the fall of the Berlin wall, are a different case. They are members of the EU, of NATO and of the United Nations. Defence of these allies is our red line, and that needs to be marked out now, in indelible ink, before it is too late.
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