By way of disclosure, I should say that I had the privilege to serve, in a modest way, in the Afghan and Iraq campaigns, and I remain a reservist soldier. I thank the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) very much for securing this debate, and it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes).
In this brief speech, I would like to talk about defence in the broader sense of the word, because the security of our nation rests on many things, not just on how many tanks or ships we have. At times, we can be fixated by so-called heavy metal warfare: ships, planes, tanks and so on. Physical defence is important, but it should not be seen in isolation, and today I would like to talk about security and defence in the round. Having said that, it is clear that we are significantly under-resourced and underfunded. What concerns me most in terms of Government Departments is that the Treasury seems to fail to understand that the point of having an armed force is not to use it. The Treasury seems to think that if an armed force is not being used, it can be cut—that is an incredibly foolish thing to think. It encourages our generals to look for wars to justify the existence of the armed forces, and starting wars and being politically or economically unwilling to finish them—there is some truth there as regards Iraq—is at best bad strategy and potentially disastrous for this nation.
I wish to talk about strategy and whether we have one, and about how we can improve coherence in policy making. I also want to make a few suggestions for parliamentary committees, building on some of the excellent things said by my colleagues on both sides of the House. First, on strategy, it is ironic that we have so many think-tanks in this country but we seem to lack one sometimes in our national strategy. I fear we are losing the capacity and confidence to act without clinging on to the coat-tails of the European Union or United States. Indeed, the US, despite its many great benefits as an ally, has in some ways exacerbated that problem. The great Oxford historian Sir Hew Strachan argues:
“a power which possesses overwhelming force has less need of strategy”
because it has so much power. That has resulted in thoughtlessness, definitely in Iraq and perhaps to a lesser extent in Afghanistan. We have been somewhat corrupted by that thought as well, because our strategy in the past 20 years seems to have been to cobble together just enough kit to take part at a meaningful level in a US-led coalition, so that we can have a political voice at the top table.
That strategy is now under pressure. First, the US has been disengaging—regardless of what one thinks of President Trump—slowly from Europe for the past
three presidencies and the Russians are now a threat, with what they call “contemporary military conflict”, using both military and non-military tools.