What does the Russia Report tell us about “global Britain”?
(Photo by Luke Dray/Getty Images)
It is almost twenty years since the Iraq War and the furore over the use and abuse of intelligence by Tony Blair and his spin doctor Alastair Campbell in the so-called “Dodgy Dossier” into Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction. The Chilcot Inquiry laid the blame on the Joint Intelligence Committee rather than directly on Blair. It now seems that the intelligence agencies were so cowed by the criticism of being politicised, that fear has prevented them from discharging their core duties.
The Russia Report, released yesterday, clarifies that Alexander Litvinenko’s murder was something of a watershed moment and that Britain has been at increased risk of Russian intelligence activity since his death fourteen years ago. Yet the report also shows how little work has been done since then to counter the Russian threat. At the height of the Cold War 70 per cent of GCHQ’s activity was focused on the Soviet bloc. By 2000 this had fallen to 16 per cent and by 2006 it reached a nadir of just 4 per cent. This will have to change — but the decision as to which areas lose resources and attention will be challenging. It seems unlikely that budgets in the wake of Covid-19 will rise to meet actual geopolitical demands.
Johnson too will most likely be accused, in much the same way Blair was, of politicising intelligence. Questions are now being asked as to why the Prime Minister and Theresa May before him did not investigate Russian interference both before and after the EU referendum. We might also ask why it took the hacking of Democratic computers during the US presidential election of 2016 for the intelligence services to raise a warning about possible Russian interference in the UK. Why had they not picked up earlier on alleged interference in the Scottish independence referendum? But the worst charge of all is that nothing was done by Johnson, despite being handed the ISC Report in March last year, before the December 2019 election.
It is not just national security that is affected by the Moscow connection. The very fabric of British society seems to have been tarnished. The ISC Report paints a picture of what it calls “Londongrad” where the levers of power have been so thoroughly interpenetrated by Russian influence and money, that even members of the House of Lords are taking the Russian shilling. It warns that successive governments have been so keen to welcome Russian money that few inconvenient questions have been asked. The Report notes that “There are a lot of Russians with very close links to Putin who are well integrated into the UK business and social scene, and accepted because of their wealth.”
The Committee has authored what appears to be a latter day “X-Article”; George Kennan’s famous assessment of “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” that became a blueprint for the early Cold War. As the Committee put it, “Russia sees foreign policy as a zero-sum game: any actions it takes to damage the West are fundamentally good for Russia. It is also seemingly fed by paranoia, believing Western institutions such as NATO and the EU have a far more aggressive posture towards it than they do in reality.” Britain’s position as target within this paranoid style of foreign policy is magnified by being America’s most significant ally and because London is a centre of Russian dissidence and wider store of wealth.
This is all happening at a moment of acute geopolitical sensitivity, which makes the task of countering Russian interference even more problematic. Russia has become simply one front in a global disinformation and interference war. The past year has also shown the simultaneous threat posed by China. Add to this list the challenge of delivering Brexit and it becomes even more worrying that negotiating post-Brexit security arrangements has been taken off the table until a trade deal has been agreed. As the Report put it “There is an obvious tension between the Government’s prosperity agenda and the need to protect national security.” Furthermore, the Report reveals that the UK security apparatus was unable to cope when it had the two major issues of counter terrorism and Russia to deal with. How would the UK deal with a further onslaught of simultaneous challenges?
Britain is in the midst of an integrated defence and security review which is intended to launch a new grand strategy for “global Britain” and shape our defence and security forces accordingly. Because we are now a mid-level power with limited resources, nothing less than a joined-up approach, including all the levers of government, will provide protection. Worryingly the Report was damning of the attempts thus far to approach defence and security through “fusion doctrine”. In plain English that means taking an approach to national security which utilises the “whole of government”. It is quite clear from the Report that “fusion doctrine” is struggling to even secure the primary security function of any government which should be “defence of the realm”. Before we start thinking about “global Britain” and sending white elephant aircraft carriers to the Indo-Pacific region, we need to make sure that our democracy is safeguarded. “Fusion doctrine” cannot become, as the Report suggests it has, simply a way for government departments to avoid taking any responsibility for Russia.
The Report will undoubtedly dent our reputation with our 5 Eyes allies. In many ways it is comparable to the fallout from the Cambridge spies debacle that, starting in the 1950s, slowly eroded confidence with each successive revelation regarding Philby and his cohorts. The damage it did to the UK’s intelligence relationship with the US lasted decades.
On this occasion it appears that the fault lies more with MI5 than MI6. This is the second major blunder by that service. In January MI5’s director general Andrew Parker, shrugged off concerns that the UK’s stance on Huawei would affect our relationship with the US. He was proven wrong in a dramatic policy volte-face last week. It seems inconceivable that he can now stay in post.
Hidden in the Report is a thank you to Christopher Steele for his “very substantial expertise on Russia”. This nugget might complicate relations with the US where Donald Trump and his allies sought to discredit Steele’s credibility after he produced a dossier into Trump’s relationship with Russia.
Johnson’s unwillingness to fully engage with allegations of Russian interference is showing uncanny alignment with Trump. In contrast Joe Biden vows to impose “substantial and vast costs” on Russia for any interference in 2020. On Wednesday German foreign minister Heiko Maas is due in London to discuss security issues. Doubtless, he will seek clarification of whether the UK will be pursuing a Trumpian or Bidenesque strategy towards Russia.
The Russians use a “wedge strategy” to undermine the rules based international order. This matters because in the absence of leadership from the US, Britain has a crucial role to play in maintaining the resolve of the European NATO members. The ISC Report was highly critical of other European countries not least France in failing to condemn Russian political interference.
The very basis of Russian strategy, as the Report notes, is to delegitimise the platform of probity from which we are able to criticise Russia and assert a credible claim to support democracy around the world. In that regard, Russian intelligence operations have highly successful, not least because of what the Report reveals about Russian influence in the UK and also the nature of the Government’s response to the Report. Putin aims to destabilise the West by sowing seeds of doubt and confusion about democracy. This is a strategy that we must refute through transparency.
Despite this, the Government has already rejected the ISC’s call for an inquiry into Russian interference into the Brexit referendum. The ISC said it was “inconceivable that a UKIC Report on Brexit would have concluded Russia didn’t interfere.” In other words an urgent, detailed and impartial inquiry into the Scottish independence vote, EU referendum and general election is exactly what is required. Nothing less will restore confidence in our democratic process.
National security has been allowed to become a partisan issue for those still divided over the Brexit decision. Russia seeking to influence the Brexit decision does not necessarily invalidate that decision, nor does their leaking of documents to Jeremy Corbyn invalidate the general election. But a failure to investigate either makes us Putin’s patsies.
The Report makes a range of recommendations from the need for an inquiry into the EU referendum, through to the creation of a new Espionage Act. The latter would deal with individuals acting on behalf of a foreign power and seeking to obfuscate the link. At a press conference after the release of the Report, members of the ISC were careful when questioned about specific instances of this. Clearly there is a more fulsome story to be told in the unredacted version of the Report.
As I wrote last week, the most plausible explanation for why the May and Johnson Governments studiously avoided investigating Russian interference into the EU referendum is because they believed that politically they must defend that vote. Brexit remains an unquestionable source of political legitimacy for Johnson. This belief is now distorting security policy. As a result it has become our collective Achilles heel, not just Boris Johnson’s.
Government has been prioritising political self-interest over national security as if the two were really divisible. Britain needs to make extremely fundamental changes to its Russia policy to ensure it can “step up” and take its place amongst a strong coalition of like minded democracies who are able to “attach a cost to Putin’s actions.” Implementing the ISC’s recommendations in full would be an excellent starting point.
Sadly the Government’s official response to the Report suggests that they have no intention of meaningfully engaging with any of the Report’s findings. To give them their due they have made long overdue changes to the UK’s sanctions regime and a commitment to the new Espionage Act was made in the Queen’s speech in December. We will have to wait to see if the Integrated Review addresses the Report’s findings more fundamentally and proposes a genuinely novel change in strategy for tackling Russia. In the meantime our political life remains vulnerable and our Government seemingly indifferent.
