Russia’s Grand Strategy

Mark Francois Excerpts

Thursday 6th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak in this timely debate, which the Backbench Business Committee should be commended for granting so early in the new year and which was so ably introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin).

To start as I mean to go on, I fear that the European skies are now darkening, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the winter weather. Perhaps I might explain why. When I was enjoying war studies at King’s under Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman many years ago, I learned that during the cold war the Soviets often referred to the concept of the correlation of forces—effectively a comparison of strengths and weaknesses, both political and military, between opposing blocs. If we adopt that conceptual approach, at least for the purposes of this debate, what does the current coalition of forces look like, specifically between NATO and Russia, particularly when viewed from Moscow?

Without wishing to be unkind, the United States has an ageing President with isolationist tendencies whose popularity is now waning barely a year into the job. In addition, only a year ago the American Parliament, Congress, was stormed by its own citizens—admittedly in bizarre circumstances, but it was overwhelmed nevertheless. The United States, once the proud leader of the western democracies and advocate of the Pax Americana, now seems increasingly absorbed by its own internal divisions—more worried by the politics of identity than those of global security.

The growing obsession of the American strategic community with China may arguably be unwelcome in Beijing, but I suspect that it is very welcome in Moscow. As just one simple example of that, despite the presidential election being 14 months ago, and regardless of the UK traditionally being America’s strongest and most consistent ally in NATO, the United States has still not formally appointed a new ambassador to the Court of St James’s to replace the popular and charismatic Woody Johnson. Do we really believe that these signals just go completely unnoticed elsewhere?

How about some of the other major NATO allies—how are they perceived in the east? For many years during the cold war when the Berlin wall was up, the German armed forces were highly operationally capable, held at high readiness and poised to vigorously resist any incursion by Warsaw pact forces across the inner German border. Today, despite the wall having come down, Germany’s armed forces are a shadow of their former selves, with severe equipment problems and worryingly low levels of operational availability. Politically, the long-standing and relatively stable Merkel era is now over. The former German Chancellor, a fluent Russian speaker, who reportedly had a strong personal relationship with President Putin, has now been replaced by a new and inexperienced traffic light coalition, including a pacifist Green party drag anchor that is unlikely to countenance any meaningful German military reform. Moreover, Germany continues selfishly to pursue a “beggar thy neighbour” energy policy sympathetic to Nord Stream 2, making it potentially even easier for Russia to deploy the gas weapon.

France, another key NATO member, with high readiness and military capabilities analogous to those of the UK—including, crucially, its own independent nuclear deterrent—is largely absorbed with the forthcoming presidential election this spring. The outcome of that election is highly uncertain, but some of the candidates, such as Éric Zemmour, who in 2013 declared Vladimir Putin as his own man of the year, worry me.

Overall, NATO, the most successful defensive alliance in history, which the Soviet Union once respected and even feared, has recently been defeated in Afghanistan, much as its Soviet forebears were many years ago. Despite all the emphasis on satellite technology, multi-domain operations, artificial intelligence, the integrating operating concept and all the other buzzword bingo that peppers the MOD’s lexicon these days, NATO was still defeated for all the world to see. Indeed, for all its supposedly dazzling advanced technology, NATO was ultimately run out of town by “a bunch of country boys” without an ability to fight credibly in four of the five established domains—space, cyber, air or sea—and armed mainly with AK-47s, Motorola radios and RPGs.

That outcome has surely not gone unnoticed in Moscow or Beijing, nor indeed in Tehran. While the west indulges in paralysis by analysis, the Russians build more tanks, tactical and strategic aircraft and hypersonic missiles and renew their nuclear arsenal. As the Defence Committee, on which I serve, has highlighted many times before, we need to be spending more on defence in this country, not less. Moreover, weighed down with covid-related debt and with international gas spot prices now at near record levels, and despite frequent entreaties from the United States as the leader of the alliance, the majority of NATO members still do not meet even the basic target of spending at least 2% of GDP on defence, with Germany at only around 1.7% this year, and Spain barely at even 1%.

Given all that, the correlation of forces is now moving in Moscow’s favour, at least in its eyes, and that smacks of opportunity. The recent presentation of a draft security treaty by Russia to western nations—primarily to the United States—has to be seen in that context. Accompanied by the overt pressure on Ukraine, which does not possess an article 5 guarantee, were that treaty to succeed, the next step will probably be to exert pressure on countries, some of which contain significant ethnic Russian minority populations which do possess such a guarantee, and that probably means the Baltic states, with the obvious aim of dividing and ultimately breaking NATO in the process. I sincerely hope that we are not going to be told, perhaps some months or years from now, even from that famous Dispatch Box, that Estonia is, after all,

“a far away country…of whom we know nothing”.

That is exactly what the Russians want.

Russians traditionally admire strength and despise weakness, and what they now perceive is a weakened NATO lacking in resolve to assert its democratic right to collective self-defence. The next few weeks are likely to be very telling in that respect. I still hope and believe that President Biden, who as a young senator actively supported Britain during the 1982 Falklands war, can recover his leadership role and, with support from European NATO allies, face down any potential Russian incursion into the heart of Ukraine and, indeed, any further adventurism elsewhere.

History tells us again and again that appeasement does not work and that countries that wish to remain free have consistently to assert the right to defend themselves against potential aggression. I say as the proud son of a D-day veteran who fought the Nazis, as did the Russian people, that we forget that lesson at our peril. Or to quote the Prime Minister’s other hero, Pericles of Athens, and I am looking directly at the Minister:

“Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it.”

The House has been unanimous today that we must retain that courage, and I hope we do because Pericles’s lesson holds true, two and a half millennia on.

[Several hon. Members rose—]