RT HON DES BROWNE MP, MR ANDREW MATHEWSON AND MR HUGH POWELL

8 JANUARY 2008

  Q240  Mr Holloway: I am not trying to drag out the number of years really, although that is oft-quoted, but I am really trying to get at whether or not you think that the governments and the public of NATO countries will be prepared to tolerate this extraordinary cost over a long period of time and whether or not actually we are being rather over-ambitious by having 40,000-odd troops and billions and billions of dollars spent every year. Will people still be swallowing this in five years' time because, if not, have we set ourselves on a sensible course?

  Des Browne: In the first instance, the basic answer to that is that, in my view, there is no alternative. You have to remember why the international community chose, first of all, in a coalition which was a coalition of the willing, but subsequently through the United Nations and NATO and ISAF, to take on this task and that is that we cannot contemplate the possibility that Afghanistan will become a failed state again and a training ground for terrorists and an anarchic state to the extent that it was, so we do not really, in my view, have any alternative but to seek to deal with Afghanistan and to seek to move it from where it presently is nearer to the 21st Century in terms of stability and security. Whether the public will allow the political leadership to continue to make the commitment that they unwaveringly have made over an extended period of time now will depend on whether progress is being made, and progress is being made and we are winning at the moment, but it is fragile and it depends on building up these other complementary parts.

  Q241  Mr Borrow: We can perhaps move on to the role and purpose of NATO in the future. When NATO was established, there was a clear and unifying threat to the Member States of NATO which is no longer the case now. To what extent should NATO move away from that consensus alliance to one in which there is a pool of supportive nations, like the coalition of the willing, for particular operations that certain NATO members may wish to get involved in rather than seeking every Member State to be united and in agreement?

  Des Browne: I know there is a view that we should seek to try to develop NATO as an organisation which presents a pool of capability from which those who are willing to do certain jobs may draw. I do not believe that that is an appropriate future for NATO because I think the NATO strength lies in its foundations. In preparation for this, I went back to the NATO Treaty and read the preamble and some of its clauses, and I do not intend to repeat them because people can do that for themselves, but it is instructive to do it because the Treaty itself sets out the ambition of an Alliance based on shared values and standards with the clear recognition that the security of its North American and European allies is indivisible, and the reaffirmation in the preamble of what it stands for stands the test of time and I think it is as relevant today as a purpose for NATO as it was before. NATO is an organisation which is extremely attractive to other countries and people are queueing up to join NATO because they get with it that security, that Article 5 guarantee and I do not think there is any question about that, but those countries, the newest countries which have joined, have been prepared to live up to the commitment of generating to the degree that they can, and sometimes in very difficult circumstances, deployable forces and deploying them. I think that, in spite of the fact that we have moved away from this unified enemy, as it were, this unified threat, to a more complex environment, NATO is still of relevance. If you look at the documents which instruct the basis of NATO, the Treaty, and if you look at the Strategic Concept and if you look at the Comprehensive Political Guidance, which was another success of Riga that I forget to mention, then you can see that NATO has proved to be an organisation which, whilst still retaining its fundamentals, has been able to dynamically evolve in a way that is relevant to the threats that we face in the 21st Century.

  Q242  Mr Borrow: So in terms of a new concept for NATO which moved on from the original concept, which you seem to reject, is there a debate within NATO around that idea or are all NATO Member States in agreement with the UK position which is that we should stick to the old 1949 concept of what NATO is for, albeit in a changed climate where you may do operations, as we are, in Afghanistan?

  Des Browne: I think there a number of ways of trying to determine the relevance of NATO to the 21st Century. I have said some of them and I do not propose to repeat them, but another one is surely the fact that NATO is busier than it ever has been as an alliance. Presently, NATO countries have 51,000 personnel deployed in five NATO missions across three continents. If that is not relevance to the 21st Century, if that means that the current concept of NATO, modernised and transforming, does not continue to be relevant, then I do not know what evidence you need for that. I understand that the threat that generated that apparent unity is no longer there and we are not of the view that any component element of the Soviet Union generates a strategic threat to us or any of our allies and that is our current position, and the comprehensive documentation of NATO sets out the strategic threats that we believe that we face collectively, but NATO has been able to modify and adapt itself to that without undermining the fundamentals of it which is the one-for-all principle.

  Q243  Mr Borrow: Just for the record, it might be useful for you to say to the Committee why you believe it is in the UK interest to be involved in NATO. Sixty years ago, that would not have been questioned by the UK electorate, but actually I think it might be useful at this stage just for you to say, "This is the UK Government's position as to why we believe it is in our national interest to be a member of NATO".

  Des Browne: I think we get from our membership of NATO an alliance with a significant number of countries, including the United States of America who are very important and our principal ally, a relationship that expresses our shared values and our willingness collectively to defend each other and to defend those values, and I think that is fundamental. Frankly, that is a shorthand way, I think, of setting out the preamble to the Treaty itself that is still relevant today. It also has become a dynamic organisation that has shown an ability to be able to transform itself and able to deal with a changing strategic environment and strategic challenges involving international terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, failed and failing states and what may come out of them. Those are the threats that we face. We cannot deal with them, I think, as the United Kingdom alone, but we need to do that in an alliance and NATO has proved to be the best political and military alliance the world has known and we are proud to be members of it, and it continues to be in our interests to stay in that alliance and what we are doing in Afghanistan collectively and together is in the best interests of the security of the United Kingdom.

  Q244  Mr Borrow: If I can touch on two areas of change, you have mentioned the Strategic Concept which was agreed at the Washington Summit in 1999. Should that be renewed, reviewed, looked at again and, if so, when? Secondly, in your memorandum to the Committee, you mentioned that NATO should become leaner, more responsive and accountable, which is obviously structural rather than strategic. What exactly do you mean by that and what changes in structure, etc, are actually involved in carrying out that change?

  Des Browne: The purpose of the Strategic Concept, as I understand it, is to take the principles of the Treaty and to define the objectives that flow from those principles within the relevant security context. That security context has changed and the Comprehensive Political Guidance, in my view, reflects that change, so the security context has evolved and I believe that we should refresh the Strategic Concept which, as you point out, was published in 1999. As for when is the right time to do that, well, now, in my view, is the right time for us to consider doing that, drawing, I think, on the Comprehensive Political Guidance and other developments that have taken place since 1999, not least, I think, to reinforce the centrality of the comprehensive approach which has become increasingly relevant.

  Q245  Mr Borrow: That shall be on the agenda for Bucharest?

  Des Browne: I think we will be at a particular point of the cycle of the United States and it may not be the most appropriate time to generate a work stream that is designed to produce a new Strategic Concept, but I think we should start to till the field, as it were, and we should start to look at some of the preparatory work for doing that in the context of Bucharest, yes. There was a second half to this question which was about structures.

  Q246  Chairman: Mr Mathewson, do you want to comment?

  Mr Mathewson: Yes, the second part, I think, really spoke about the internal structure of the Alliance and I think the Secretary of State has sort of set out the political journey of evolution that the Alliance as a whole has gone through. I think, to accompany that, we would like to see a sort of internal reform process that makes the money go to the places where it is really needed. I think we could probably see a thinning down of the command structure, making the command structure more relevant to current operations. We could probably see internal reorganisation of the way the headquarters works itself to produce more coherence and swifter decisions. In many ways, the internal workings of the Alliance are somewhat lagging behind the political evolution that the Alliance has gone through, so we have as an aspiration a sort of reform agenda for just trying to sharpen up the way the headquarters works, the way the Alliance works, where the money goes, making sure that the money we put in is going to the relevant parts of the structure rather than, as it were, the rather outdated parts of the structure, so it is a fairly longstanding and continuing reform agenda just to try to modernise it as an institution to keep pace with the political evolution. [5]

  Q247  Chairman: So, Secretary of State, if I can summarise something that I think you just said, I think that David Borrow asked, "Do we need a new Strategic Concept now?", and I think you said, "Yes, we do now need a new Strategic Concept, but it is a waste of time going for it just at the moment because the American elections are going on". Is that what you said?

  Des Browne: I do not think that was what I said, but it certainly was not what I intended to say. I think we do need it and that process of work will take some time and I think we should begin to consider what changes need to be made to the Strategic Concept and the like in the changed strategic context that we are in and in the light of the quite significant changes in that strategic context which are recognised in the Comprehensive Political Guidance. Whether that can be done at Bucharest from here in the current political situation, I do not believe that we can, but we can start to make some progress towards it.

  Chairman: I do not think you should shy away from my summary of it simply because it sounded stark. I thought it was an interesting reply that you gave and I am grateful for that.

  Q248  Mr Hancock: Can I take you back then, and you have mentioned the point about the political cycle in the United States which should be relevant to Bucharest, but I think one of the issues that there is going to be from the outgoing Administration and the new, incoming Administration is that NATO will only succeed from the American point of view if they are prepared to produce the capabilities that they are short of now, and that can only be produced if countries are prepared to spend more on defence. Now, the unwillingness on the part of some countries is because they do not see the strategic threat, they no longer believe that they are at risk as a nation, they have no external threats and yet NATO offers them the comfort and they reduce their defence expenditure, knowing that the biggest component in NATO, the Americans, are demanding, as they have done for the last 60 years or so, that Europe put more of a commitment to defence. How can NATO have a future if the countries do not accept that the only way you can increase capability is, one, by the use of resource, but in most instances by an increase in the resource in the first place?

  Des Browne: There is no question that lack of investment is a problem. I understand that and the Americans regularly exhort, and encourage, their NATO allies to increase expenditure in defence, and it is manifestly the case that, unless countries increase their defence spending instead of reducing it, as they are in some cases, then NATO is unlikely to develop all the capabilities required to meet the current level of ambition, and I do not think there is any question about that. It is equally important that they spend the money that they do spend in the correct way.

  Q249  Mr Hancock: Does that not take us full circle back to where David Crausby came in to say that unless there is an equal sharing where people have to step up to the plate fairly, then NATO is becoming a two-tier or three-tier organisation?

  Des Browne: NATO is an organisation of individual nations, but my argument is that, increasingly, nations are beginning to accept their responsibilities. One of the advantages, in a sense, of the Afghanistan operation is that it has become the most successful driver of the transformation.

  Q250  Chairman: Do you think the United States shares your argument? Do you think the United States continues to be very interested in NATO?

  Des Browne: I think the United States by its actions shows a commitment to NATO which is impressive.

  Q251  Chairman: That is because it is carrying the whole of burden, is it not, or the vast majority of it?

  Des Browne: The United States, like any other country that works in an environment of consensus, is making a national decision to do that, and that is because, in my view, the United States of America values the NATO Alliance . As I have already said, NATO has never had more troops committed to operations than it presently does, and of course the Americans make the lion's share of that contribution. What other evidence do people want of the United States' commitment to NATO?

  Q252  Chairman: That is one way of putting it.

  Des Browne: I am told that of the 51,000, 18,000 are from the United States, that is the proportion of it.

  Q253  Mr Hancock: Can I take you to something you touched on earlier which is about those countries clamouring to join NATO and the reasons behind that and whether or not NATO has got a finite number of component parts. It is difficult now to get them to share the burden, as we know, and new countries are clamouring to join. Where do you believe, Secretary of State, the political parameters and the geographical parameters are? They might be different of course because for political reasons you might want to go further than you would in defensive terms. Where do you stand on further NATO enlargement and what countries do you see as the new group of applicant countries?

  Des Browne: NATO is a North Atlantic alliance. It has proved itself over time to be capable of developing relationships beyond that geographical definition with other countries. I do not get the sense, whatever other people may say about whether it would be better if it was an all-world alliance, that any of those other countries are expressing any interest in joining NATO. The countries who are seeking to join NATO generally, in my view and in my experience, are those countries who fit within the North Atlantic geographic area. I think that European countries that meet the criteria for membership of NATO should be allowed membership of NATO because that is what NATO was set up to do.

  Q254  Mr Hancock: We know the Georgians have just had an election for a President and at the same time they had a vote on joining NATO. Would you say that Georgia was a country that would be a welcome addition to NATO, bringing with it, as it does, all of its problems and all of its suspicions at its Russian neighbour and also the intoxication that Russia has now that Georgia is about to "do for them" in some way or another?

  Des Browne: We are in the process of what is known as Intensive Dialogue with Georgia and have been for some time, which is a sort of precursor to MAP, which is the stage before membership. My view about Georgia, or indeed any other country, is that countries who meet NATO's performance-based standards and are willing to contribute to Euro-Atlantic security ought to be able to aspire to membership, but of course—

  Q255  Mr Hancock: We let countries in who did not meet those standards, did we not?

  Des Browne: You will need to give me evidence of that.

  Q256  Mr Hancock: Estonia did not; Bulgaria did not.

  Des Browne: What parts of that did they not meet?

  Q257  Mr Hancock: They did not actually have in place the structures that NATO insisted they should. We used whatever discretion the NATO Alliance had to say we could not have two of the Baltic states without the other one, so it was three in, and we could not have Romania in without Bulgaria, so Bulgaria came in. I am not against that but when you talk about a country like Georgia, who sees NATO as their best Article V reason for being in NATO to defend them from whatever provocation they will offer to the Russians over the next five years if the Russians come back at them, is it in Britain's interests to see enlargement taking in countries like Georgia who are already in a virtual hostile situation?

  Des Browne: It would not be, in my view, in their interests to take them in now but that is why we have this process of engaging with countries in order to move them along so that they are in a position for membership.

  Q258  Mr Hancock: So your view is then, Secretary of State, for the record of our report, that any country that fulfilled the obligations they might have is a suitable candidate to join NATO?

  Des Browne: No, that is not what I said.

  Q259  Mr Hancock: I thought that is what you did say.

  Des Browne: That is not what I said.