We should talk more and bomb less. I say that as someone who wants us to have strong defences. I want our country to play a leading role in the world and to be available, with the UN and allies, or if necessary on our own, to reinforce our values. I accept that there are occasions when we have to fight a just war. We were right to liberate Kuwait with our allies, and we were right to liberate the Falklands, but we need to ask ourselves some hard questions about some of the military interventions we have made under Governments of both parties in recent years.
I am glad that the Government accept that we can go to war only if the House approves such action, which I think has always been the case, and I am glad that they recognise that that is the most serious thing we can do. We have the power, collectively, to authorise our troops to go to kill other people in a foreign country. That is a very serious thing to do, and it should be done only after full debate and, if necessary, on a vote of the House to show that it has at least majority approval—it is even better when there is consensus.
To guide the Government, whether we are approaching such a position again or not, they should ask themselves these questions. First, are they sure that diplomacy and politics have broken down completely and that there is no further scope for diplomacy and politics to carry the problem forward and try to make it better? War is not a good answer. It is what happens when politics and diplomacy fail.
Secondly, after we win a war—even if we have had a great victory, as the allies had in 1918—we need to go back to politics and diplomacy and get it right. Otherwise, we might find that we have created a worse monster that requires yet more conflict, as we are in danger of proving in the middle east. The west has the power to get rid of a regime it does not like, but it does not necessarily have the power to support and create a democratic regime in its place that has the acceptance of enough people in the country to keep it together and make it a better place. It is not a win if we get rid of a nasty dictator and replace them with warring bands who kill even more people.
We need to get the Government to ask whether diplomacy has failed and whether the situation is one in which the use of force, if successful, is likely to make the situation better. If we are going to use force, can we please have a diplomatic and political strategy for the aftermath of successful military engagement? We need to know what military success looks like, but more importantly, we need to know how military success leads to a happier country, democratic values, tolerance and toleration, and all the things we believe in. When we inject more weapons and fighting into a situation, we normally make people not more tolerant, but more intolerant. We make them not happier, but more resentful.
We also do enormous damage to their economy, so there are fewer ways for the people who believe in peace and our values to earn an honest living, carry on a normal life and create the kind of society we would like to live in.
If the previous two questions have been answered in the right way—if diplomacy cannot work, and if force might make things better—the third question our Government should ask before using force is this: do we have the force necessary to do the task? We must not send our forces into battle if there is a danger or a serious risk that they cannot win. We do not have that luxury when we are defending our country, but when we are deciding whether to intervene somewhere else, we have the luxury of asking whether we can win, or whether we can win with the right allies. We should want the odds to be very heavily tipped in favour of success if we are interfering in somebody else’s country.
There are common characteristics to the current conflicts and civil wars. Ukraine, Libya, Syria and Iraq all have the same basic problem: fledgling or difficult democracies do not command the support of all the people in the country. Many people believe that their state does not have the right borders. Many people believe that their current Government, be it a tyrant or an allegedly democratic Government, do not speak for all the people or protect the minorities. Many people inside Ukraine, Iraq or Libya do not believe that there is a solution for them inside their countries as they are currently constituted.
Surely, as the mother of Parliaments, with our democracy and our knowledge that one proceeds by debates, argument and votes, not bullets and bombs, we need to put a lot more effort into talking those people through how democracy works and into trying to work with them to see whether it is possible to get consent from enough people to these arbitrary borders, which were probably drawn on the map by us 100 years ago under very different circumstances, or whether they need to have ballots, as Scotland currently is, to see whether they want to remain in these countries. I am not going to presume and I do not have the time to redraw lines on maps, as that must come from the politicians in those localities, but the tools to solve these problems are arguments, discussions, debates, pamphlets, the internet and votes—what we believe in—not bombs and bullets. We should be very careful before we either supply them with more bombs and bullets or go in thinking that we know the right people to kill.
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