Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker; I will try to wind up after seven minutes. I am mindful that lots of others want to get in. Lots of good speeches today; I just want to start by referring to the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran). I completely agree with what she is saying about a two-state solution. Those friends of Israel who give Netanyahu and the Israeli right an easy ride on this are no friends of Israel, as far as I can see, because all they are doing is making Israel’s long-term future significantly more precarious. Israel’s existence is accepted and guaranteed when there is peace with the Palestinians, and until there is peace with Palestinians, Israel is always going to be under threat of some kind.
Where I differ from the hon. Lady is on her optimism. I would have agreed with her in the 1990s, but there has been so much more awful water under the bridge since then. On Palestinian statehood, I cannot see a good reason not to do it now, but if we had Palestinian statehood now and Hamas immediately took over that Palestinian statehood in the west bank, it would simply undermine the cause of Palestinian statehood. There is a significant problem there and, as the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Sir Liam Fox) rightly pointed out, Iran is behind so much of this.
I want to make a few points in the brief time I have. I want to make reference to the excellent speech made my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) and also the speech of the Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman, my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns). There appears to be a growing, significant, provable link between the use of proxy warfare and non-state actors, often used by other states, and the rise in conflict-related sexual violence, which in some parts of the world and some conflicts is now endemic. We saw that with ISIS, which is a non-state actor, and arguably nobody’s proxy, in the use of Yazidi women effectively as the spoils of war until they were raped to death. We have seen it with the abuse of Israeli women by Hamas, but Hamas are also increasingly intolerant in their Islamist attitude towards women in their own society. We have also seen it with the Houthis, with Wagner in Ukraine and with Russian troops. It occasionally involves state troops, as well as non-state actors and proxies, and there is an increasing casualness with which sexual violence is used in conflict, which I think should disturb us all.
The world is moving to a more dangerous place; that is quite clear. It has been becoming more dangerous since 2010. Putin declared his new cold war in his Munich speech in 2007, but we did not want to notice. Unfortunately, everything since then has progressed quite logically from Putin’s point of view, although we have still feigned surprise. I do not know why we do that. Since 2015 we have had a growing China problem with an increasingly intolerant regime under President Xi. There is a battle for humanity under way in the 21st century between open societies and closed societies and between societies where AI and big data will hopefully be used to improve the quality of human life and places such as Iran, China and Russia where AI and big data will increasingly be used to control people and societies and, effectively, in an Orwellian state, to prevent people from rebelling because it will be possible to use algorithms to identify when they are about to rebel or fight back and do something about it. That is the bigger picture that we are dealing with.
It is particularly concerning at the moment that in several areas of the world we have conflicts between united axis powers, if I can call them that. Out of three potential conflicts that are under way at the moment or about to be, Ukraine and Russia is a hot war where the Russians believe that we are directly involved although we believe that we are indirectly involved. That war is fought with cyber, disinformation, espionage and poisoning, and some of that has been happening in the UK. We also have the expansion of China, with it trying to take territory in the South China sea and presenting an increasing threat to Taiwan. Xi has told his army to be ready to take Taiwan within the next three years, if I remember correctly.
In the middle east, Russia’s ally Iran is behind much of what is happening, as my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset so eloquently said. Iran now has 22 proxies. In Bahrain it has two or three and in Iraq it has at least six, some of which are rocketing UK and US forces. Where else? In Lebanon it has Hezbollah, which is potentially its most powerful proxy. It is strongly aligned to the regime in Syria. That is not a proxy but the regime has been heavily dependent on Iran to fight its wars. Throughout the middle east, the Iranians have built up a web that is a significant threat to us.
We have had conventional wars that we prepared for and fought for, or that we prepared our armed forces to fight and hopefully win, and we have this very black-and-white notion that we are either at peace or we are at war, yet the nature of war is changing. We are living in a world in which we are effectively in a perpetual state of conflict with some nations. Russia sees itself in perpetual conflict with us. There will be periods of hot war and periods of cold war, and we must be prepared as never before. Likewise, we are effectively waging an indirect war against a series of Iranian proxies: Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and whoever was rocketing us this week in Iraq. China’s power is more economic, but it is using “little blue men” to seize territory in the South China sea—that is in contrast to the “little green men” the Russians used in Crimea. In these key areas of the pre-global war phase, we are beginning to see a form of total war being waged by our adversaries in Ukraine, the middle east and the South China sea.
The Foreign Affairs Committee recently heard some interesting evidence on how Iran is, in many ways, both more unstable and more powerful than at any other time. It has 22 proxies, and it has the material to build and prepare a nuclear weapon within a week. Iran is at a potentially frightening stage but, at the same time, we know it is very unstable and we know that its young people, especially its young women, are hostile to the regime, as never before. Many people in Iran wish ill of the regime, so we are dealing with an Iran that is more aggressively adventurous in its foreign policy, potentially because of its weakness at home.
We have arguably not had enough deterrence, and we need more. Various Members have talked about that in greater deal than I have time to go into now.
All these things—the growing number of black swan moments and the growing instability in the world—are an argument for having a greater sense of strategy. Many people talk about strategy, and there are so many think-tanks in the UK dedicated to strategy. It would be wonderful to see politicians from both sides of the House engaging more in strategic thinking. One of my suggestions for global Britain is that, as well as having a National Security Council to deal with current problems, we should have a national strategy council that is always looking five, 10 or 20 years ahead to identify problems as they come.
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