HL Deb 22 December 1982 vol 437 cc1118-27

3.5 p.m.

Lord Mayhew rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what progress has been made in the intermediate-range nuclear forces negotiations at Geneva; and whether they will make a statement.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, I wish to draw attention to the deplorably negative reaction of President Reagan and the Prime Minister to the offer on nuclear disarmament contained in Mr. Andropov's speech yesterday. Naturally, some clarification is needed of the Soviet offer. In particular, what is supposed to happen to the SS20s which would not be deployed in Europe under the offer? Would they be scrapped or would they be redeployed outside Europe? But much has now become clear. First, the Russians are prepared to make significant reductions in their missiles to avoid the deployment of cruise missiles and Pershings. This is encouraging and should have been welcomed. It already vindicates the multilateral approach to disarmament. If Europe's unilateralists had had their way, and if the British, the Germans, the Italians and the French had taken the same unhelpful attitude on cruise missiles as the Belgians and the Dutch, this Soviet offer would never have been made. Indeed, the Soviet Union would never, I imagine, have agreed to come to the negotiating table.

The second important feature is that the offer places no restriction on the deployment of American missile submarines in European waters. The Americans already have a powerful fleet under NATO command in European waters, much of it in Holy Loch. It is argued that these submarines are strategic, not intermediate range, but the SS20s have a longer range than the American Poseidon missiles. If the SS20s are intermediate range weapons, so are the Poseidons. Therefore, it is untrue to say that the Soviet offer would leave the Russians with intermediate range missiles in Europe, but not the Americans. Of course, the President and the Prime Minister can argue that submarines are less accurate and have a longer reaction time than land-based missiles. But it is not clear why, in the European context, this makes them ineffective as a deterrent.

Indeed, the whole argument about nuclear balance sometimes becomes quite unrealistic. The President and the Prime Minister seem obsessed with the idea that nuclear missiles must be precisely balanced, one for one and type for type. Why do they take this line? Most of the rest of the world accepts the plain truth that, after a certain level of nuclear capability has been reached on both sides, questions of balance become virtually meaningless, and an agreement to reduce overkill can profit both sides immensely, even if more overkill is abandoned on one side than on the other.

I am sure there will be general agreement that, if the Russians and the Americans could reach agreement in this field—an agreement acceptable to both of them—it would be enormously valuable. It would freeze at lower levels, by mutual consent, the number of nuclear warheads deployed in Europe. It would strengthen confidence in multilateral disarmament and greatly improve the prospects for the START talks. It could be a turning point in East-West relations. And perhaps not the least advantage would be that it would restore the unity and sense of common purpose of the alliance, which is very much lacking at the present time. It would also help to end the bitter internal divisions on defence policy which have occurred in all the member states of the NATO alliance. Yet President Reagan has dismissed the Soviet offer with contempt and other Western leaders have tamely followed suit. Yesterday the United States again stated officially that only the complete elimination of the SS20s would justify forgoing the deployment of cruise missiles and Pershings. This means that after more than a year of negotiation the United States' position has not moved one inch.

The question must be asked: Do the American President and the British Prime Minister seriously want an agreement? It is not a question one would have needed to ask if at the White House there had still been President Truman or President Eisenhower, or President Kennedy, or if Atlee, Eden or Macmillan had still been at No 10. It is a great misfortune that at this critical time the occupants of the White House and 10 Downing Street should be two people so strongly drawn by temperament and ideology towards conflict rather than conciliation—people, moreover, who take a dangerously simplistic view of the intentions of their adversaries. To those who have observed their past performance, it is no surprise that they should have dismissed the Soviet offer out of hand, stuck to their original demand and given not the slightest sign that they were ever contemplating any counter proposals.

With anyone else one might presume that this was adopting a tough negotiating position. If so, nobody with any experience of negotiating with the Russians—I myself have had some experience—could possibly object to that. But with President Reagan and the Prime Minister this is not a reasonable assumption. It took much time and much persuasion before President Reagan agreed even to negotiate in this field, and it took more time and more persuasion before he agreed to the zero option. Since then the United States has been negotiating in a remarkably leisurely fashion. There have been long recesses, taken on American initiative, without Soviet support. When I was in Washington earlier this year I asked at the highest level the reason for these recesses and I was told it was because the American team quickly became jaded in these negotiations. This is not a satisfactory reply. I now understand—the Minister can correct me if I am wrong—that when the talks were not in recess the average time that the two principals met together was not more than two hours a week. There is no evidence, either, that the British Prime Minister has seriously pressed President Reagan at any stage to take these negotiations more seriously.

When we recall and analyse the statements and actions of the President and the Prime Minister in matters of defence and disarmament over a long period, the truth is inescapable. Neither of them is seriously hoping or working for a compromise at Geneva. Let us suppose, as seems possible, that the talks fail because the Americans rather than the Russians prove too inflexible. What is the British Government's policy then going to be? I say that in this event there must be no question of the deployment of cruise missiles in Britain. If the British Government attempted to deploy these missiles after the Americans had caused the Geneva talks to fail, they would find Greenham Common ringed not by tens of thousands of unilateralists but by hundreds of thousands of multilaterlists. That would be the effect if this should happen.

What should be the Government's reponse? I submit that first the United States Government and the British Government should welcome Mr. Andropov's offer. His concessions may be limited but, after all, President Reagan, after a year of negotiations, has made no concessions—so really, the West is not in a position to complain. Next, clarification of the Soviet offer must be asked for on a number of points. Then President Reagan, supported and urged on by a British Government, should make constructive and sensible counter proposals to the Soviet offer. The Government's dismissal of the offer is unbelievable folly. If the Government do not change course and do not exert the utmost pressure on the United States to reach an agreement, they will be arousing the opposition not of a minority of unilateralists but of millions of people who are committed multilateralists and supporters of the NATO alliance.

3.15 p.m.

Lord Thomas of Swynnerton

My Lords, I must apologise to the House and to the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, for my inadvertent absence at the beginning of this debate. I insufficiently informed myself as to the time when this debate was likely to start. This is certainly a timely debate and we must be grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Mayhew, and, at an earlier stage, Lord Kennet, for introducing it at this time. I am bound to say that, had I been asked to suggest what would be the most interesting and important matter to discuss this Christmas, it would have been the extraordinary suggestion that a major power was involved in the attempted murder of the Pope. This would have seemed to me to be a more striking subject for us to debate today.

Nevertheless, there is no doubt that this is an important subject. As I said a moment ago, the debate is well timed in view of the proposals made by Mr. Andropov in Moscow and reported in today's press. I must say that the speech made by Mr. Andropov, as it was reported in the Financial Times, began in what I consider to be a very unpromising manner. To say that the war preparations of the United States and NATO have grown to "a record scale" comes rather strangely from one who has been part of a Government which has built up its armed forces in exactly that way over a large number of years. This is particularly so in respect of nuclear weapons but it is true of conventional weapons as well; we have all read of the growth in the strength and menace of the Soviet Navy over the past 20 years. Perhaps, though, this is just a question of a preamble and the proposals involved in Mr. Andropov's speech are more important and more serious.

The question we have first to ask is, was this speech intended only as propaganda? It certainly had in it some element of propaganda; I believe we all accept that, and that the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, would not disagree. These proposals were launched in a speech and not at the conference; in a speech just after the conference had adjourned for a month. Had it been a proposal intended principally for practical discussion, surely it would have been launched at the conference itself. It is also comprehensible that a dictatorship with no public opinion to worry about very much would be likely to try to influence public opinion in countries where its supposed opponents are for or against a particular line of policy.

We know from other sources, statements and actions that the Soviet Government are particularly interested in trying to divide the United States and Europe, and in trying to prevent deployment of the Pershing missile in West Germany and, to a lesser extent, the establishment of cruise missiles in other countries, including our own. There is no doubt whatever that the speech of Mr. Andropov in the form in which it was presented to us today in the press, certainly suggested that those aims were fulfilled. There may have been other aims but certainly those aims of trying to disturb public opinion over the establishment of Pershing and cruise missiles, and trying to divide the United States from Europe, were perfectly served by that speech. That is a preliminary point.

As to the viability or validity of the proposals themselves I think that the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, would agree that the nuts and bolts of any realistic disarmament programme proposal must depend on the supervision and control powers included in it. Any realistic person who has negotiated with the Russians, as the noble Lord told us he had, could hardly fail to notice that in this proposal put forward by Mr. Andropov yesterday there was not a single reference to how this was to be effectively controlled; we cannot help noticing that. This is a particularly serious omission when we recall that a mobile missile like the SS20 is particularly difficult to control. Even in the age of aerial surveillance that is true. The whole proposal, therefore, seems to me to be a much less attractive one than that put forward a little over a year ago by President Reagan for the so-called zero option, which would have been easier to control, since there would have been no intermediate range missiles allowed at all. It is perfectly obvious, therefore, that it was much simpler to see whether such a proposal was carried out or not.

The second point I thought should be raised was what would happen to these Soviet SS20s if they were going to be withdrawn from Europe. Would they be destroyed? Again, there is no reference to this specifically in the speech made by Mr. Andropov-yesterday. They were going to be withdrawn from Europe. What does "Europe" mean in these terms? We all know what we think of as Europe in terms of the European Community, but it is perfectly plain that it does not mean that. It means Eastern Europe, but are we to suppose that the SS20s will be withdrawn from Western Russia, from European Russia? Again this proposal is quite silent on that point.

I must say that, if these SS20s are to be withdrawn East of the Urals and left intact, that is not a satisfactory proposal, because, in the first instance, they could probably reach—as far as I understand the range of the SS20—almost all of Western Europe except for a thin sliver of Portugal. Secondly, they could in a time of crisis be brought back by lorry into the Western part of the Soviet Union, or even into Eastern Europe, in a matter of hours. That seems to me a very important criticism of this proposal. Once again the President's zero option proposal seems a much more attractive one.

I also think we should consider what would happen if these missiles were actually destroyed, and in some way, too—another very important point—the SS20s which we would assume would be allowed under the proposal to continue to be in Asia were to be neutered, so that we should simply be facing the same amount of nuclear power as we, the British and the French, have in other forms of missile or other forms of nuclear capacity. Surely we would simply be back, if that were to happen, in the state of affairs we were in in 1977, when Chancellor Schmidt first drew our attention publicly, at a lecture at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, to the very serious imbalance so far as intermediate range nuclear weapons were concerned. They were for a short time known by a different title, but, perhaps thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, they changed from that name to their present more satisfactory title of intermediate range nuclear weapons.

Surely we should simply be back in that position, which was recognised by all the Governments at that time, after some persuasion by Chancellor Schmidt, to be a very bad position. After some difficulty, he persuaded President Carter to take that view, he persuaded Mr. Callaghan to take that view and he persuaded President Giscard d'Estaing to take that view. After a great deal of difficulty and persuasion, President Carter agreed that the Pershings and the cruises were to be deployed in order to meet that anxiety which had been well expressed by Chancellor Schmidt. If, in fact, all these proposals do is take us back to a position which Chancellor Schmidt thought was very dangerous, what is the point? Surely once again the zero option proposal is a good deal more attractive.

Let us not forget, too—I do not believe that Mr. Andropov will have forgotten it—that until now we have never thought of the French and the British nuclear weapons as exactly intermediate range missiles. We thought of them as strategic missiles. It may be that they cannot get very far compared with the ICBMs possessed by the two super powers but, nevertheless, we have thought of them as strategic weapons. Furthermore, we all know very well that the French nuclear force is not fully integrated into NATO. For all these reasons, therefore, the American proposals are much more satisfactory. I cannot help reaching that conclusion.

Your Lordships may be thinking that it will be desirable to take into account the other nuclear forces which, of course, should be considered in relation to the proposals. I believe that to be very desirable, because, even were this proposal to be introduced and these cuts made, we should still find ourselves in Western Europe facing an immense number of Soviet weapon systems, many of them with nuclear capacities—in particular, the Backfire bomber to which attention was paid, rightly, in the period 1977–79 to which I am referring.

Your Lordships may be thinking that perhaps I should have dealt in these comments on Mr. Andropov's speech with the other proposals he made in relation to cuts in levels of intercontinental ballistic missiles. I think that it is reasonable to do so, even though that is not the subject of this debate. However, once again it seems to me that President Reagan's proposal for what is, in effect, a 50 per cent. cut in the efficacy of the strategic reach of the Western Alliance is a great deal more attractive than the proposal of a one quarter cut made by Mr. Andropov.

Your Lordships will no doubt be asking, "What of the MX?" I believe that we should remember that the United States has not introduced any new intercontinental ballistic missiles since 1969. Mr. Andropov said in his speech, as I read it, that the American proposal was suggesting that there was some kind of lag in consequence of that failure to introduce a new missile since 1969 and to speak of that as a lag was some kind of deliberate untruth. Those were the words as reported in the Financial Times. I can only suppose that that must have been an error of translation because it is obviously the case that the old American ICBMs of 1969—the Minuteman missiles—seem at the present time to be unlikely in the first instance to be able to destroy the newly hardened silos containing the Soviet missiles. Secondly, they would be unlikely effectively to survive a first strike if such a thing were to occur.

Indeed, a combination of the zero option as far as INF is concerned and the President's proposals on the ICBMs seems to be much more reasonable than what was put forward by Mr, Andropov in his speech yesterday.

I confess to a certain sense of surprise that the American proposals are not more widely applauded and better received. I have always thought it odd that the United States, which brought public relations to a fine art in Madison Avenue, has not been able to put over its international proposals for disarmament more effectively to a wider public than is the case.

I confess that in the end I would freely admit to being sceptical about the efficacy of these disarmament negotiations. I admit that. I do not think that is being unduly cynical or pessimistic. I find it difficult to believe that a state whose ideology still impels it towards expansion, particularly military expansion, and a state whose heavy armament programme is concerned as a matter of course with bullying both its own citizens and its neighbours into subservience, is likely to be able to accept a far-reaching disarmament programme, I may be wrong and I shall be delighted if that turns out not to be the case.

The Soviet Union has, on occasion, accepted one or two modest proposals for disarmament such as SALT l or the partial test ban, when it was plainly in its short-term interest to accept such proposals. Some reduction in Soviet arms spending may well be something that any Soviet Government may wish to see at some time in the future. I am sure that the main aim of the proposal put forward yesterday so effectively and so timely (if I may put it like that) by Mr. Andropov was to try to prevent the establishment of the Pershings and the cruise missiles.

I feel that the best advice we may receive this Christmas on this type of subject can be seen in the most recent issue of the New Statesman, in which there is a very important letter from a Czech citizen, Mr. Racik, who writes: I would see the task of a non-naive peace movement as that of supporting military force as an instrument of democracy confronting totalitarianism and of restraining that instrument's propensities to subvert the democratic system".

3.32 p.m.

Lord Jenkins of Putney

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Swynnerton, has told us that he thinks that President Reagan's zero option proposal is reasonable and acceptable; and, of course, so it is from the purely Western point of view which he adopted. But if one wishes to reach an agreement on any subject and on any kind of debate, one has to try and see the proposal as it appears from the point of view of the other side, and not only from the point of view of those who may be regarded as belonging to the West.

In seeing the matter from the point of view of the Soviet Union—with whom, after all, we are supposed to be seeking an agreement, so it is incumbent on us to try and see it from their point of view—they start from the position that at one time they had no nuclear weapons; that the only nuclear weapon which existed for many years was owned by the West; and that we, the West (and I am regarding the West as a whole for the moment) are the only group of nations which has actually dropped a nuclear weapon in war and have in fact killed people by nuclear weapons.

Therefore, the Soviet Union see themselves in this matter as being initially at a disadvantage; as existing for years in the position of being helpless against a nuclear weapon; as having very strong conventional forces but, in nuclear terms, as being the country which all the time has had to try and catch up. That is precisely what they have been doing. If we look at the record of the development of nuclear weapons over the years, we find that all the initiatives have been taken by the West; all new developments have been made by the West, and on each occasion the Soviet Union has been catching up.

Now, in one single respect, the Soviet Union has gone ahead, and that is in land-based, medium-range missiles in Europe. It is as regards that matter that the United States says, "We are certainly ahead in intercontinental missiles; we are certainly enormously ahead in submarine-launched missiles; we are also probably ahead in battlefield missiles; and on this one point, as far as land-based intermediate range missiles are concerned, we must be ahead there, too". This is the reality of the situation as it is seen from the Soviet Union. It is not only the reality of the situation as it is seen from the Soviet Union; it is the reality of the situation as it is seen by every international organisation, whether it be the Stockholm body SIPRI or the ISSS.

All the international organisations agree that this is the reality. It is not the case, as the Americans are fond of suggesting, that they are behind and are catching up. The reverse is true. It is on this single point of the land-based missile that the Soviet Union has caught up. This has caused the great American sensitivity. To try to deal with this along comes President Reagan with his zero option, which the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, finds so attractive.

In the circumstances which I have described, can noble Lords really be surprised that the Soviet Union do not find this particularly attractive? From their point of view it is not. This is why, when Mr. Andropov comes along with his proposal, I think it is unreasonable to dismiss it out of hand. I think that it would be equally unreasonable to dismiss President Reagan's zero option out of hand. What ought to happen is that both proposals ought to be put on the table and serious discussions ought to take place.

I am inclined to share the view put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, who I think has done us a service in raising this matter, that the multilateral discussions which have been taking place for so long have hardly been serious discussions. While they have been taking place throughout the years, the weapons themselves have accumulated. There was an American preponderance, on the whole, about 10 years ago, at the range of a capacity in both sides to kill everybody else on the other side about twice over. What has happened now is that, with the increase in the totality of nuclear weapons to something of the order of 50,000 or 60,000 spread over the world, each side can kill the other side about 10 times over.

It is in this situation that the apprehensions which have been so clearly put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, should be taken seriously. It is because the multilateral discussions which have taken place over these years have achieved nothing that the nuclear weapons all over the world are increasing and that the tensions are increasing. Every international organisation which examines the matter does not say, as the Government sometimes say, "Everything is quiet; everything is peaceful; do not worry; the nuclear weapons have kept the peace". The international organisations say that nuclear weapons are building up, that one of these days they will explode, and that that day will not be too long coming.

I believe that this is why the sensible unilateralists and genuine multilateralists are beginning to come together. The extremists on either side—and I refer to the non-genuine multilaterists, if such people exist, and I would possibly also refer to the excessive unilateralists, if such people exist—take the view, which is often ascribed to them, that unilateral disarmament means total unilateral disarmament by the West. It really has never meant any such thing, and it is now beginning to be appreciated that what those of us who are calling for unilateral action mean is that this country should make the sort of gesture which we are uniquely placed to make in order to try to break down the impasse and create the multilateral discussions which we know can be the only way to peace.

I think we all accept that, ultimately, multilateral discussions and bilateral discussions between the United States and the Soviet Union are the only way in which peace can be achieved. Therefore, the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, is right to raise this matter. The truth of the matter is that, in the eyes of some noble Lords, the Soviet Union can do no right. This was quite clearly illustrated just now when the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, said: "This cannot be a serious proposal of Mr. Andropov because, if it was, they would have put it forward in the Geneva discussions instead of doing it publicly". Only a couple of hours before the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, said that this cannot be a serious proposal because, in fact, they put it forward privately in the Geneva discussions.

So whatever they do—whether they put it forward privately or publicly—one way or the other, it gets dismissed. It gets dismissed in Geneva by ignoring it and it gets dismissed publicly for a reason that I leave your Lordships to guess. It is beginning to seem to some of us that the West is not interested in having real discussions about getting these armaments down. It is in this circumstance that people in this country and in the United States, too, are becoming increasingly alarmed about the failure of their own Governments to take the situation seriously.

It is incumbent upon all of us to ask the Government not to treat the matter, as they appear to have been doing until now, as something which can go on and on, without ever reaching a conclusion, because the conclusion which some of us believe will be reached unless the breakthrough is made is the conclusion which the world is beginning to fear is inevitable, and that is a nuclear holocaust. It is that conclusion which we believe the Government have a paramount duty to seek to avoid, and it is that which we hope to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, when he replies to this debate.