HL Deb 09 March 1995 vol 562 cc468-78

7.15 p.m.

Lord Kennet rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what discussion, whether in NATO or otherwise, the Ministry of Defence has had with the US Defense Department about the US Defense Counter-proliferation Initiative; and what is their attitude to the initiative.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, I raised the counter-proliferation initiative (CPI) in the defence debate on the Queen's Speech and asked some specific questions which were not answered at the end of the debate. I consequently wrote to both the Foreign Office and defence ministry Ministers, including the noble Lord who is to answer today, and I asked for an answer. The Ministry of Defence referred me to the Foreign Office, but I have had no reply. That is why I am asking this Question today. I am sure that the noble Lord will understand.

What is the CPI? It is an American programme of military procurement, brought about by industrial momentum and accompanied by the usual justificatory doctrines and assumptions. Last month the House of Representatives threw out the Republicans' idea of reviving the old strategic defense initiative (SDI)—President Reagan's star wars. But that leaves untouched this other, more comprehensive, initiative.

The end of the Cold War did not stop defence people producing brilliant technologies. The momentum is still colossal. President Reagan, a Republican who was far from believing in balanced budgets, had invested so much talent and wealth in the now defunct SDI that ever smarter weapons and systems are now arriving just as if it had not been abandoned. Moreover, interest payments on the US budget deficit are increasingly absorbing the country's revenue, so weapon sales abroad look more and more useful.

Last May, John Deutch, the US Deputy Secretary for Defense, listed 16 "areas for progress" that needed more money. Among them were the following: capability to detect, locate and disarm, with a high degree of assurance and in a timely fashion, outside the United States weapons of mass destruction hidden by a hostile state or terrorist in a confined area; real-time detection and characterisation of bacterial and chemical weapon agents; detection and characterisation of underground structures; and hard underground target defeat including advanced non-nuclear weapons (lethal and non-lethal) capable of holding counterforce targets at risk with low collateral effects. These last include a rather new class of weapons, smart burrowing munitions. They burrow into the ground and only go off when they find a space—a chamber.

To carry forward this procurement and the sales of it abroad, there has to be a military doctrine about what to do with the weapons. This is much the same problem as faced Kennedy in 1961 when, having won the election on a missile gap with the Soviet Union which reconnaissance had already shown did not exist, he still had to order vast numbers of Minutemen, many times what his predecessor, Eisenhower, who was a soldier, had ordered. Then Kennedy had to find a military doctrine to fit the numbers. That was the second strike counterforce doctrine, which was the fuse that lit the Cuba crisis because the Russians, not surprisingly, understood it to comprise a first-strike counterforce threat as well.

The doctrine was then, and is now, that possession of a counterforce system will deter attack, but the reality is that, if it works at all, it works both defensively and aggressively. While a second counterforce strike would not be unlawful—the US would already have been attacked—a pre-emptive first counterforce strike in the absence of war would be aggression and therefore very unlawful indeed.

The prototype operation for the CPI is Israel's 1981 strike on Iraq's nuclear facility—Osirak—which, of course, triggered many of the current arms races in the Middle East. Our Government have always made clear that that attack was wholly unlawful. The Reagan administration unfortunately found it quite tolerable and Israeli officials have recently been suggesting that they could do the same to Iran. I have seen no objection to that unlawful suggestion from the American Administration, which is, of course, funding the local anti-missile missile programme to shield Israel from Iranian retaliation. All that, at the very time the United States has apparently agreed not to press Israel on the non-proliferation treaty, while still pressing all the Arab states to sign up.

But a military doctrine for the new purchase is not enough. There must also be a political doctrine. This goes more or less as follows: we have seen, have we not, that neither diplomacy nor treaties can stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Out there in the big world there are these rogues, states and terrorists, who, given half a chance, will get these weapons—nuclear, chemical and biological—and missiles to put them on, so we had better be able to see what they are doing in real time. Then we had better be able to shoot them down before they can land on us and our friends. Even better still, we had better be able to identify and destroy them before they leave the ground, or even under the ground. That, sure as hell, will deter them.

Well, probably not. Elsewhere in the world, nations have long been obtaining weapons of mass destruction, not for fun and because nothing prevents them, but for very real fears, which they usually articulate quite clearly and we usually fail to listen to.

To halt and roll back proliferation, it is useless just to cry out against it and its effects; we have carefully to remove its causes. North Korea was being goaded into proliferation by the nuclear sabre-rattling and vast military exercises being ceaselessly conducted all around its borders. Iraq's programme was redoubled, not weakened, by Israel's attack. Iran's, if it has one, will be redoubled by Israel's threats.

The counter-proliferation initiative stands also on a political assumption: the world so needs American leadership that the United States - the sole hegemon, as Mr. Gingrich encouragingly puts it—must accumulate and deploy weapons to meet that need. Part of the assumption is that the world agrees and will want to give house room to American infrastructure. We could allow the use of Diego Garcia and Ascension Island, perhaps, as well as bits of the UK. There have been discussions with Namibia. At this very moment, the highest tech weapons are being offered to Poland and the Czech Republic, who surely have better things to spend international aid on, and military agreements are being reached with Armenia, Albania, and several others.

The CPI implies also a faith in boundless technological capability. It is ill-founded. One serving US intelligence general has already warned about this programme of multi-sensor surveillance: do believe there are things we cannot know. Identifying the contents of underground chambers, in real time, from space; distinguishing a harmless bio-engineered pesticide from a military biological or chemical process or weapon, and then rendering them all harmless will not happen. And of course no one will ever know that, as well as ordinary technical bugs in the system, there is not a bright young hacker in it for the fun or because he disagrees with the idea.

So what is our attitude? That is what we hope to hear from the Government tonight.

To sum up, we have a strongly motivated procurement of the new generation of precision-guided munitions, including burrowing munitions, which would be launched from unmanned platforms—supersonic stealth cruise missiles, perhaps, unmanned aerial vehicles and so on—which are to be controlled and re-targeted in flight by space-based sensors and computers that can unfailingly identify and therefore trigger attack on whatever they have been programmed to identify as unacceptable. A globally operational, computer-led identification system and a globally operational, computer-led attack system, both under the political control of a single sovereign state? There would be no way in which the international community could ensure that such a system would not be misused. If it can be used unilaterally, it can be misused unilaterally.

What we need is European eyes in space. Strategy begins with geography, which we have in common with Europe, not the United States. Nor can we go on depending on information handed down to us in spoonfuls by the American intelligence apparatus. As we have learned in Bosnia, we do not know what we do not get. Iraq and North Korea and co. can just say of US intelligence: "They would say that, wouldn't they?" We do not know who is right. We—and this goes for the whole United Nations—must have more than a single, nationally controlled, source of intelligence about whose quality and context we know next to nothing although probably we know more than any other country. The Treasury accountants, who seem not to know much history, believe it has to be cheaper to depend on another government's intelligence services. One can only say, "Wake up!"

Britain needs to join up with Helios as soon as possible. Probably we should not be buying US cruise missiles with their built-in permissive links.

The Russians are being consulted about the CPI because some of what is already being tested in the United States requires the bilateral ABM Treaty to be re-interpreted. Even the old system of global protection against limited strikes—and the CPI is far more ambitious than little old G-PALS—cuts across the indefinite and concept-derived limits of the ABM Treaty. "Tactical" to the United States is "strategic" to us. Such words measure nothing.

Certainly the Russians see some charm in participating in a very expensive scheme in which others might want to pay them for what they can contribute, but they do not intend to see any such apparatus put into the sole hands of the US. Anything like that, they say, has to be right inside a Security Council system. But unfortunately it cannot be; not if it is intended to perform automatically in real time. Nor will the Chinese, nor the Japanese, nor the Indians, nor the Koreans in the slightly longer term accept this kind of American hegemony. Nor, I think, will we in Western Europe.

If the new version of the Atlantic Assembly that Mr. Rifkind proposed in his thoughtful Chatham House speech last month were already in place, the CPI would probably not have got as far as it has. Mr. Rifkind's wish to get the United States Congress rooted more closely and democratically into the world we all share is warmly to be commended.

I say that it might not have got so far as it has, but of course we do not know how far it has got. The American chiefs of staff were supposed to be taking a decision on it at the end of January, I hope that the Minister will be able to enlighten us to some degree about what is going on and what is our own attitude to it.

The world remains unchanged in certain all-important respects which affect all countries. That is that scientific and technological predominance does not guarantee political predominance unless it is put into military terms. If it is put into military terms, it guarantees the political rejection of the country which does so, and in any case, in all the advanced countries there is a continuing danger of the political apparatus and wisdom of those countries falling permanent hostage, half unconsciously, to the pressures of technological development and of industrial profit.

7.29 p.m.

Lord Mayhew

My Lords, I must apologise to the noble Lord for missing the beginning of his speech. Indeed, I have to say that I had only the minimum notice that this debate was being rescheduled this evening. However, I congratulate the noble Lord very warmly on raising this matter, and on doing so in an extraordinarily well-informed and well argued speech, every word of which I heartily endorse.

Perhaps the project that he criticised is more formal and more official than he realises. I recall its being expounded, not by the Assistant Secretary of Defense, six months ago, but by Mr. Les Aspin, the United States Secretary of Defense, a couple of years ago. It certainly deserves all the arguments against it that the noble Lord deployed so well. It is based, of course, on the precedent of the Israeli attack on Baghdad in 1981. It is argued now that that delayed Saddam Hussein's nuclear programme for a few years. That may well be true. But it also inflamed still more the hostility and distrust of Israel in the region. It undoubtedly prompted the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction, not only in Iraq but in Iran and Libya. If a scheme such as the noble Lord describes is practicable; if it is technically feasible and can be afforded; if the Americans really have the outrageous arrogance to take into their own hands the whole question of the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, it will certainly produce the same results. There will be an increase in hostility, distrust and tension, and there will be increased manufacture of weapons of mass destruction. It is a mad scheme. I should be surprised if the United States Government discussed it with Her Majesty's Government. I look forward to hearing from the Minister at what point, if at all, we were consulted about this. We ask for an assurance that, if they were consulted, Her Majesty's Government did their utmost possible to dissuade the Americans from this provocative and ill-judged scheme.

Another feature of the scheme is that it undermines the world's efforts to secure a successful non-proliferation treaty. This is a plan which assumes the collapse of the non-proliferation treaty; otherwise there would be no point in the project at all. This plan will have an impact on the conference on non-proliferation which takes place next month, to be attended by 161 member states. They will be deeply shocked at the lack of faith shown by the United States in this approach to non-proliferation. There is the assumption that only the United States has the right to prevent proliferation, and to prevent it in the most extreme and aggressive military way—an illegal way—in which this plan has been designed.

It is my wish that, at the non-proliferation conference the British Government will show more faith in the concepts of agreed non-proliferation. The fact is that so far the conference has not gone very well. As we warned from these Benches, the fact that the five excepted nuclear nations have failed to implement their obligations under Article 6 of the treaty has put them on the defensive. The British Government, too, have not fulfilled their obligations under this article. For example, I believe that they still have reservations about the comprehensive test ban treaty. They have been pushed and pushed in the direction of supporting such a treaty. But as I understand it, the French and British Governments still maintain the need for tests that are excepted from the treaty. Perhaps the Minister will confirm or deny that.

As we on these Benches have constantly pointed out, the British Government also maintain a nuclear potential, with the number of nuclear warheads well in excess of what could possibly be required for a minimum deterrent. And they are keeping the numbers secret. Here again, the Government are inviting criticism and suspicion from the non-nuclear members of the non-proliferation treaty. Why do they not tell the world how many nuclear warheads they possess? The Russians do that, as do the Americans. Only the British Government arrogate to themselves the right, not only to possess nuclear weapons when the rest of the world, with five exceptions, is supposed not to have them, but to keep quiet about it. The British Government assume the right to insist that everybody else in the world subject themselves to intensive, intrusive inspection of their civilian nuclear capability, while reserving the right to conceal from the world the number of nuclear warheads that Britain possesses.

I am bound to say that the Government have ignored the warnings given from these Benches that, by taking this line, they would soon find themselves hopelessly on the defensive against the non-nuclear members of the conference; that they would find that when they asked for an indefinite extension of the treaty they would be met with the perfectly reasonable argument, "Why should we indefinitely extend the treaty before the five recognised nuclear powers fulfil their obligations under the treaty?". We said that they would say it, and so they are. I predict that there will be a great deal of opposition to an indefinite extension of the treaty while the five nuclear powers fail to fulfil their obligations under Article 6. That is the way that the wind will blow.

I therefore ask the Government, these questions. First, were they consulted about this illegal and provocative American project? If so, what comment did the Government make? Will the Government now put their whole weight behind negotiating a successful non-proliferation treaty? Will they take the lead by fulfilling their own obligations under Article 6 of the treaty?

7.39 p.m.

Lord Williams of Elvel

My Lords, the House will be grateful to my noble friend Lord Kennet for raising this important Question. The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is certainly one of the major challenges to national security in the modern age. This is a particularly appropriate time to be debating proliferation issues. On 17th April, as the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, pointed out, the nuclear non-proliferation treaty extension conference will convene in New York. At that conference the parties to the treaty will decide how much longer, and in what way, the treaty should continue after 25 years in force.

The NPT, along with other control mechanisms, such as the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the Missile Technology Control Regime, constitute part of our non-proliferation policy and our efforts to prevent proliferation happening. But the subject of today's debate concerns counter-proliferation. How do we respond to proliferation if our non-proliferation policies fail to prevent it? How do we tackle new proliferants?

At its 1994 summit, NATO decided to seek to develop a comprehensive approach to proliferation, the primary focus of which will remain prevention. But it will also include consideration of developing the military means to deal with proliferation should prevention fail. I understand that the work is in hand but has not advanced very far yet. Perhaps when the Minister comes to reply he will be able to comment on that.

In the meantime, the United States itself has launched a counter-proliferation initiative, the purpose of which seems—I use the word advisedly—to be to enable the United States to tackle a regional adversary who is armed with weapons of mass destruction by using advanced conventional capabilities rather than nuclear ones. I understand that the Pentagon has identified a number of future capabilities which will be required to support the counter-proliferation mission area, including theatre missile defences and interdiction to deal with extant weapons of mass destruction capabilities.

I understand that so far as the British Government are concerned, a consortium led by British Aerospace has been awarded a contract by the Ministry of Defence for what is called a pre-feasibility study to examine our national options and help inform future policy decisions, including whether the UK has a requirement for ballistic missile defence. Quite why a contract of that nature has been given to a private firm—and an arms supplier at that—is beyond my comprehension. No doubt the Minister will explain why our defence policy seems now to be determined by the private sector.

Given the counter-proliferation initiative, a number of political and technological questions arise. The political risk, which my noble friend Lord Kennet spelt out very clearly, is as follows. The development of these capabilities in themselves might tempt some to use them pre-emptively rather than in response to a regional conflict initiated by a future proliferant state. A country that was merely suspected of developing nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction might find itself the subject of an attack launched in order to take out that country's suspected capability. Of course, that would be highly dangerous, because, first, if unprovoked, it would be contrary to international law and thereby could destroy completely the international non-proliferation regime; and secondly, there is no guarantee of success. Instead, it is likely to make that state more determined and antagonistic and could spark a regional war. The noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, gave an example of how that had happened in the past.

There are also technical problems with such an initiative. For example, theatre ballistic missiles and missile defences are as yet unproven. The performance of the Patriot against the Scuds in the Gulf War fell rather short of the hype provided by the manufacturers at the time. Obviously, it would take only one single nuclear warhead to penetrate one's defences for those defences to have been judged a failure. We should also be aware that ballistic missile defence is no panacea for dealing with attack by weapons of mass destruction, even if those defences work perfectly. Are there other ways to deliver such weapons—by artillery shell, free-fall bomb or low flying cruise missile; or possibly even in a suitcase?

Any development of theatre ballistic missiles will also need to pay close attention to the terms and restrictions of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which bans strategic missile defences almost completely. I understand that the United States and Russia are each allowed to deploy 100 launchers around a single site. Russia chose Moscow; the United States has not exercised the option. A continuation of that treaty is crucial to existing nuclear disarmament agreements remaining in place and future negotiations taking place. We should do nothing and the United States should do nothing to undermine it.

Further, there are the cost implications of any such initiative. We must be wary of being sucked into an expenditure black hole in pursuit of a technological quick fix. At every stage we must ask ourselves whether money spent on counter-proliferation might not be spent better on proliferation prevention, for example by increasing what we regard as the inadequate budget of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the NPT's own watchdog.

I have no doubt that the Ministry of Defence will bear those factors in mind during the quaint pre-feasibility study on which it is engaged and will weigh them very carefully before proceeding further. It is probably right to examine whether or not certain defensive counter-proliferation options are cost effective and therefore worthy of investment of scarce defence resources. But we should not let that distract us from our central focus—here I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew—on trying to prevent proliferation through an enhancement of more traditional methods of international treaties, export controls and diplomacy.

7.46 p.m.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Henley)

My Lords, perhaps I may start with an apology to the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew. I understood that he had been informed about the revised time of the debate when it was changed from last Monday. I offer him my sincere apologies. Obviously the message failed to get through. I am also most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, for writing to me and setting out some of his ideas. I believe he knows that his letter went to his noble friend Lord Healey but eventually it reached me. The letter which the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, addressed to me also went to the noble Lord, Lord Healey, and reached me this morning. I am not aware whether the letters of the noble Lords, Lord Williams and Lord Mayhew, who also wrote to me, went to the noble Lord, Lord Healey. Perhaps I might ask the noble Lord, Lord Healey, to answer these debates on other occasions.

The noble Lord has given me a welcome opportunity to set out our approach to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, which is of crucial importance to our security interests. I would rather not follow him in what I believe was almost an attempt to drive a wedge between the United Kingdom and the United States in this important area, as I suspect he was doing. I hope that he will bear that in mind as he listens to what I have to say.

The US counter-proliferation initiative describes the American attitude towards proliferation. It was launched following President Clinton's address to the UN General Assembly in 1993 when he drew attention to the risks posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. But, as both my noble friend Lady Chalker and I have made clear to the noble Lord in letters dated 3rd and 4th February this year, the counter-proliferation initiative is very much a national US initiative, as the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, rightly stressed. Therefore, I cannot comment on it directly. The United Kingdom has been briefed about it both bilaterally and within NATO. We are certainly very interested in US thinking in this field. But we are not directly involved—and should not expect to be directly involved—in what is a distinct national US matter. Nor, despite our close relationship—I emphasise to the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew—is the United States obliged to consult Her Majesty's Government on all its initiatives.

Therefore, it is not my responsibility to defend the counter-proliferation initiative against its detractors. However, I cannot let what the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, said pass entirely without comment. In particular, I should correct his implication that the United States has given up all attempts to prevent proliferation and instead is concentrating simply on military approaches. That is a misrepresentation of what we understand the American position to be. Last year, the NATO Foreign Ministers stated: The principal non-proliferation goal of the alliance and its members is to prevent proliferation occurring or, should it occur, to reverse it through diplomatic means".

Lord Kennet

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for yielding. I said nothing to imply that the United States had given up on the political search for non-proliferation.

Lord Henley

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord for stressing that. However, I think it is worth my stressing on behalf of Her Majesty's Government that all NATO states had committed themselves to that goal. The mere fact that the Americans might be pursuing the particular policy which the noble Lord states they are pursuing does not rule them out of pursuing the policy of non-proliferation by means of prevention rather than by the military means I think he was suggesting.

Like us, our American allies recognise that those military measures have a role in dealing with proliferation, but, like us, they recognise that they could never be the whole answer. Nevertheless, we in the United Kingdom have not ignored an aspect of the US counter-proliferation initiative which seems to be causing the noble Lord particular concern; namely, ballistic missile defence. We have recently embarked upon a programme of studies to examine this subject in more detail and a contract for this work was placed with the consortium, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Williams, led by British Aerospace in October 1994. I fail to understand the noble Lord's objections to our use of the private sector in this field. It certainly has the technical expertise to provide us with advice on options and the way forward. It will, in time, provide us with information on those options: on performance criteria, technical risk and cost, which again the noble Lord was right to stress. We have also invested in technology demonstrator programmes which could have missile defence applications.

These studies will enable us to make informed decisions about the way forward, including whether we have a national requirement for ballistic missile defence. As part of our examination of that, we naturally consult allies in NATO, including the United States, and co-operate with them on a range of associated technical issues. But it would be wrong to interpret those discussions as either United Kingdom or NATO involvement in the United States counter-proliferation initiative.

The proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and their means of delivery is a major security concern. The acquisition of such weapons by states like Iraq not only threatens already unstable regions but also increases the risk of the United Kingdom, or our forces engaged on missions around the world, being confronted by weapons of mass destruction. It is right that the United Kingdom should keep all responses under review and should do so in concert with our allies. I shall therefore take this opportunity to set out our overall approach to non-proliferation.

Our efforts to control proliferation embrace several complementary strands. First, we seek strong and verifiable international treaties, such as the non-proliferation treaty—I shall say a little more about that later—which will bind states to various controls on the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Next, we aim to ensure that anyone breaching the treaties is held to account. It is also important for us to have, and to encourage others to have, rigorous export controls to hinder would-be proliferators. And we must also ensure that our Armed Forces have effective protection against possible attack.

At the alliance level, the United Kingdom is also participating actively in work under way to develop a NATO policy towards proliferation. This work is intended to reinforce the treaties and regimes and therefore has both political and defence dimensions. The senior politico-military group on proliferation deals with the political dimension by providing a forum for regular consultations among NATO members, and others, on proliferation and examining ways in which the alliance can contribute to the implementation and strengthening of international non-proliferation agreements.

Military implications are dealt with by the senior defence group on proliferation. The group has already produced a risk assessment and is now into the next phase of work in an analysis of the implications of these risks and the capabilities which might be necessary to combat them. The final phase of work will be to assess current alliance capabilities and identify any areas in which these might need to be improved. The work may include an examination of ballistic missile defence, but the alliance will be looking at the whole spectrum of possible responses and capabilities and not just this aspect. As your Lordships would expect, the United Kingdom has been playing an active part and will continue to do so.

I said that I would say more about the non-proliferation treaty. I can give an assurance to the noble Lords, Lord Mayhew and Lord Williams, that we are committed to securing unconditional and indefinite extension of the treaty at the conference of states parties which starts in April of this year. We take very seriously our obligation under the non-proliferation treaty to work towards nuclear disarmament in the context of complete and general disarmament. One ought to stress on these occasions that once Trident is fully in service the explosive power of the United Kingdom's operational nuclear inventory will be some 25 per cent. lower than in 1990. As both noble Lords will be aware, we have already disposed of a considerable quantity of our nuclear weaponry. I do not think that I need elaborate on that this evening.

Perhaps I may deal with one or two other points. The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, asked why the United States is not pressing Israel to join the nuclear non-proliferation treaty but is pressing the Arab states to do so. I cannot answer for the United States but I can say that Her Majesty's Government wish to see the non-proliferation treaty universally supported and will continue to encourage Israel to accede to it. We hope that Israel will take that on board.

To conclude, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction poses a serious threat to international security. The Government view the consideration being given in NATO and other multilateral fora to this problem as of great importance. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, has provided an opportunity to remind ourselves of the dangers in this area. I believe, though, that he is wrong to imply that the United States, let alone the United Kingdom, has lost sight of the central importance of preventing proliferation from occurring in the first place, and reversing it if it has happened, by diplomatic means. We are examining both nationally and within NATO what role military means might have as a part of our general non-proliferation efforts. It is prudent for us so to do. But we are not being driven—I must stress this—towards any predetermined outcome. The need to reach the right conclusions is too important.

Baroness Trumpington

My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now adjourn during pleasure until 8.5 p.m.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.

[The Sitting was suspended from 7.57 to 8.5 p.m.]