 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Peter Mandelson, itinerant sort of cabinet member, trade commissioner and whatever and very pleased to be here this afternoon to chair and moderate this panel. Joining me are Stephen Smith who is the Australian High Commissioner here in London. Vice Admiral Paul Madison who used to command the Canadian Navy but has had a change sort of change of late change of career and is now the inaugural director of the University of New South Wales Defense Research Institute. Alesso Patelano who senior lecturer in war studies in the Department of War Studies here at Kings and Nicola Hior, well done, Nicola Leveringhouse who senior lecturer at Kings College London. Where are you joining us from Nicola? From Germany. Very good. So I suggest that we have a sort of half an hour discussion or thereabouts here and then open it up to questions from you all and I think that I think the first thing we should do and I'm going to come to you Steve if I may is just to sort of take a step back and look both at the origins of Orcus and have a discussion about its durability. I mean it's clearly a very big deal conceptually, politically and certainly financially in what is becoming the epicentre of the world's economy and our geopolitics. I suppose the first question I would put to you in a sense Steve is this, to what extent should we see Orcus in these sort of big power political US versus China Indo Pacific terms or conversely just a very very large procurement program by your government. I mean the final landing place for what has been a very long journey and saga of submarine development by successive Australian governments which you now think has found its final landing place. So how should we see it in those terms variously? Well not much in that first question Peter. So I'll do my best probably helps if I start at the notion of the formation of the Indo Pacific because historically we've heard to the Asia Pacific. We started in terms of Australia started using the phrase Indo Pacific 2011 12 and formalized that in our 2013 defence white paper which used the nomenclature Indo Pacific for the first time in an official Australian document and that became our strategic framework from that point in time. And that was all about not just the rise of China but the ongoing importance economically and strategically of the United States but also the rise of India the rise of Indonesia the rise of the ASEAN economies combined the point that you made generally. So I think the starting point is the Indo Pacific and we did that 2013 2014 2015 when we were all still going through the notion of China was becoming deeply successful raising and taking millions hundreds of millions of people out of poverty becoming a responsible member of the international community. And then Xi Jinping and events since then have shown that China is now much more aggressive and assertive. So what is the formation of the formation of AUKUS has as it's as it's underpinning the notion of integrated defence and deterrence just as for example G7 or Quad might also have that effect in the modern era but it's it's we describe it AUKUS Pillar 1 and AUKUS Pillar 2. Pillar 1 is easy to see submarines as you might put it a very big capability project. Pillar 2 is advanced technologies which can can have either dual use or military capability hypersonics autonomous submersibles artificial intelligence and the like. We describe it not as some people do as a as a sort of coalition or a pact or a or or an alliance but essentially a trilateral technology partnership. Submarines of course deeply important and we only move to consideration of nuclear power and capability when two things happened. Firstly we got our conventional submarine fleet back in the water with the help of UK Submariners including John Coles who did the same job for your nuclear fleet some decades ago but once we could get our conventional submarine fleet back in the water and operating it at world-class levels. The second thing which changed our capability or our deliberation was of course the modernization of nuclear power for a submarine and then the Americans who had previously given only access to the UK of course gave it to us and AUKUS is now what it is. I think with I think to make the point about its longevity when you go to Barrow and see the scale of the endeavor you very quickly realize firstly this has enormous strategic and capability implications but it also has enormous scientific technology manufacturing jobs economy people mobility implications and one of the lessons from Barrow which is told to me every time I speak to a US Submarin or a capability person is that you grow the capability and you grow the capital investment once you get to a particular level you can't fall below that. So it's got deep long-term depth to it in terms of a project for Australia 20 30 40 years and that means from our perspective it's here to stay but it's also here to stay because we're now dealing with change circumstances in the Indo-Pacific reflected by a more assertive and more aggressive China which we still want to work with and still want to deal with and we do want to have everyone agreeing and abiding by the rules of the road but currently there's some question marks about that in terms of Chinese intentions and so both a large capability project which has got industrial and economic implications and future technology in terms of dual use or military capability all of that makes sense both from an economic and a security perspective in the in the Indo-Pacific. Okay so you're placing equal emphasis on pillars one and two eventually the SSN orcus subs sort of classic but big procurement program and secondly pillar two which is about a lot else in technology transfer and research and development. I've been heard to say on a number of occasions both in Australia and here my own personal view capital P personal view is that if pillar two fails then orcus will fail and it will default to. Okay let me just take you up on that. Okay because you're basically saying pillar one is worth it as long as there's an enormous amount more to be gained from pillar two. Well pillar one would be worth it as a standalone. Yes but it's a very very expensive standalone. Yes well nuclear submarines are expensive as you know from your own cabinet experience and it'll be expensive for Australia expensive the United States but well worth it in terms of integrated defence and deterrence but if you really want to say we have a trilateral partnership about forward-leaning technology we have to make pillar two a success which in some respects is a bit more difficult to grip up strategically. Submarines everyone understands that but when you're dealing with three different jurisdictions different stage of development for each of the half dozen or so forward-leaning technologies. I'm going to come back and test you on pillar two if you don't mind in a moment. I just want to ask you though I mean I knew you're going to say you're completely confident about this but politically sustainable in Australia we're talking about a sort of cumulative 40-year program that's got to be sustained at an eventual cost of somewhere between 270 and 370 billion Australian dollars and that's just by today's reckoning you know what happens to budgets they usually double. I mean with those sorts of sums involved an enormous amount can change in politics in 40 years and Australia politically is quite an adversarial place you probably noticed and you can just imagine when you know the in at some stage some politician some party locates an electoral advantage and saying well shouldn't this go more to spending on the aged or disability support or the health service or schools or whatever and suddenly you find that consensus which exists at the moment in Australia just becoming coming to fracture slightly. Is that not a danger? Well there are always political risks that one has to manage but at this point in the cycle the start of the AUKUS program and the submarine program what do we have? We have strong bipartisan support for the program that's the first thing. Secondly it was it was it was started by a previous Liberal Coalition government and now being implemented by an Australian Labor Party government and there's strong bipartisan support for that. Does it have its naysayers or critics in Australia? Of course it does we're a thriving robust democracy in terms of the adversarial nature of Australian politics that's probably best exemplified by our question time from my experience I find your question time much more fearsome and adversarial. Really? I thought we were taming comparison. It scares the hell out of me. But I think the big lesson that the Prime Minister the Deputy Prime Minister the Minister of Defence Industry have learnt when they come here is if you start this great national endeavour you cannot stop and that's also the lesson of your nuclear deterrent submarine program. Okay even as it starts to eat into the destroyer and frigate procurement of the rest of the Australian Navy as it starts to eat into the armies procurement you think that your military let alone the public will be completely consensual and sustainable in their support when this sort of expenditure starts eating into so many different parts of the Australian procurement budget. Two things firstly for my sins of the past which are innumerable I was the co-chair of the Defence Strategic Review which the government released in April and that made the point both in its classified version and unclassified public version that in the end more money will need to be spent on defence in our current strategic circumstances. First and secondly there will be choices that we have to make and there will be some current capability which we have which down the track we will no longer have. We need to change for example our army from a land-based territorial army to a amphibious capable literal army U.S. Marines which also is a responsibility for long range fires to project power into our northern maritime approaches. So will there be changes in capability yes will there be some things we do now which we can't do in the future yes will there be resource demands yes but both the previous government and the current government have all have both said consistently we will need in our current strategic circumstances to spend more money on defence and I was here this morning for your Prime Minister and he essentially said the same thing about the UK and NATO countries generally. Okay Paul let me ask you because you've commanded a navy albeit somebody else's Canada. What is your view on the rationale for orcas? I mean the the I mean the basic calculus of how to create a safe stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific has clearly changed. I mean now everyone is concerned about how to deter potential China misbehavior that's going to impinge on the Indo-Pacific's safety and stability and prosperity. From a naval point of view what's your view about this calculus and about the deterrence rationale for orcas? Well thanks for the question and before I go there just let me say that your original question around is it procurement or is this more strategic? It's definitely more strategic and it's a it's a response to messaging out of Beijing which which Stephen referred to and so the belief that we had in the West that the Chinese Communist Party would incrementally democratize and greater exposure to a free and open global trading system turned out to be a myth and some would argue that it was a myth that was deliberately supported by all elements of the Chinese Communist Party deployed globally. So you're convinced that orcas is the answer to this? It is a part of the answer and the the threat settings as they have evolved over the past several years especially after Xi Jinping uncloaked at the 19th Party Congress in 2017 and made it clear that it was his long game objective to replace the United States as the arbiter of a post-World War II rules-based order as we know it driving a value and freedom-based sort of democratic approach that that they see this you know they see the US in terminal decline and they see a roadmap to sort of shaping how the global design of this century unfolds that caused Canberra which has enjoys unique geography in the crucible you know of the in the Indo-Pacific sort of vortex to really begin to ask how can Australia as a medium resource medium power resource rich global trading nation of only 25 million 26 million people secure its vital national interest and so to double down on the relationship with the United States and other key allies and partners and better than France well France is a is a key partner there are allies and there are partners but as this was happening the United States I think has realized that things have changed for them as well and the United States has come to recognize that if they are going to sustain a protection of the of the global rules-based order as we know it that partners and allies need to be enabled to rise with them okay the challenge I think that's what okay I think we've got that but you know you've had a lot to do with naval procurement in your life I suppose the question is is this not such an absolutely colossal commitment it is that risks gobbling up the rest of the procurement program not just of the Navy but the rest of the Australian military well the the so the G the G remember at the time Malcolm Turnbull former Prime Minister was rather skeptical about Orcus saying look this is this is too much much yeah Stephen would be there's going to be a massive opportunity cost in his view in committing such resource to this program yeah so the the world Australian Navy has identified a requirement for a nuclear propelled submarine capability for decades and has been in this conversation with the UK and with the US periodically over time but I think that the change in the strategic settings created that opening for the US and the UK to have that conversation with with with Australia and and and to drive on a commitment okay transfer that capability let me just step on from Australia and go elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific unless if I may ask you this because I want I'm going to come and ask Nicola if I may about China in a man and China's response to all this I mean in your knowledge of the region as a whole would you say that there is buying from military opinion and military interests in other countries elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific or is there more is that more nuance is there greater skepticism I think of course the the depends on who you're asking the question and but let me take it half a step back because I think what has been missing from this conversation is an important point that is the point that allows a broader support for orcas across the region and that is you know the Indo-Pacific and assuming was absolutely right to to emphasize the fact that now instead of Asia Pacific East Asia or whatnot we call it in the Pacific it's because at the heart it's a matter centric regional space the driving beating heart of prosperity it's not trains or highways it is shipping it is undersea cables this is at the very heart of what makes this region one of the most dynamic economically one with the greatest potential moving ahead and this is something that we need really to keep at the back of our mind when we think about orcas because it means also that any significant potential challenge to the stability of that matter and order which on an average day is pretty safe but it revolves around some small bottlenecks whereby both cables and ship it becomes extremely vulnerable and we've seen and over the last half a decade of so certainly 2015 onwards significant change to the operational stability of that theater which in turn churn changed calculation in Australia about a strategic warning time as it is known in Australia and push this question which has always been there about nuclear subs from being a conversation with partners and allies to what we really need to think about this so that's an important point because it underrides when you have a behavior and territorial matter disputes to begin with have been very much a sympathetic if behavior is a measure or as an indicator of intent it tells us something about Chinese ambitions that in terms and it changes how you're looking that theater and in particular when it comes to matter and total disputes in the South China Sea whereby with the artificial military installations you have an extension of your capacity to project military power well beyond the national shores across the entire region then for a country like Australia and indeed for any other stakeholder this is not just about Australia this is about the stability of the matter order as a whole and the links that exist in terms of trade economy and and you know dust field scales that links in the Pacific to the rest of the world including the Gulf as well as Europe it's absolutely essential so this is not just a question like you know it's an Australian problem no no no no no it's also European problem it's a British problem we all need to be paying attention to the fact that we live in a matter century and if there are risks in critical places of passage to that order then we need to be thinking about it so that's where you have countries like Japan South Korea India both bilaterally as well as to rather multilateral means whether it is the quads when it comes to Australia Japan the United States or India or indeed where it comes to other trilateral tech mini laterals like GCAP that links together Italy Japan and the UK you have a fundamental understanding that AUKUS is coming about as one of the pieces of a security architecture in which key advanced capabilities will give you that strategic edge in order to continue to maintain some degree of balance which you're saying that we're creating strategic edge in a way that doesn't sit only secure the Indo-Pacific region you're saying that that knocks on to other parts of the world so that when some in Britain for example some in the British Labour Party which supports AUKUS by the way nonetheless have said look if there's a Labour government coming to office in this country we're going to have to make our primary focus on the Euro-Atlantic area rather than the Indo-Pacific your repost to that would be you can't actually separate these areas into such neat geographical zones that one one region's strategic edge is another is another region's advantage as well 100% also because the the key sort of there's there's three points to make about this and this is a very important point and there's three aspects to this number one what we are looking at and unfortunately we don't have my usual very weird map of the world that that basically shows you that the core challenges and revisionist powers to the international order they all cluster together in that Eurasian space which basically brings about to everybody else a potential for maneuver and the capacity to exercise pressure not just directly one-on-one but also indirectly that's where these indivisibility of the Euro-Atlantic Indo-Pacific space comes together that's the first point to make you have to think about the ocean as a big connecting fabric a glue that brings prosperity together and because their prosperity underlines everybody's economy then it becomes also a place where you exercise the pressure but specifically to the point about the UK in the prioritization and you've got two elements to think about one is if technology if we agree that technologies and advanced capabilities are a key element of part of how you build some sort of strategic advantage in the future then surely working with close partners and allies unlocks access to ideas innovation instead of thinking about your own creativity it's me Paul Steven getting together metaphorically your contribution will be bigger than mine by the way but the point is it really unleashes sort of access to much greater potential. Well your hence pillar two which I think is is very important let me Nikolai if I may can I come to you and ask you about China how does Orcus look from China's point of view would you say they are indifferent or are they worried I mean are they brushing it aside or taking it seriously. They're taking it seriously you know I think a lot of commentary is focused on the sort of diplomatic reaction which has been obviously quite critical and a lot of Chinese interpretation of particularly the US agenda. I think a lot of that overshadows what are potentially serious military implications for China and even if Orcus is a trilateral technology partnership as opposed to a defence arrangement it does add a new layer of deterrence against China and there are a number of new layers of deterrence against China in Asia today that didn't exist some five to ten years ago. Some of these are sort of trilateral arrangements millilaterals some of these are individual countries like Japan changing their own defence postures and the way they look at issues like Taiwan for instance so in essence I think Orcus is a serious military concern it complicates China's room for strategic manoeuvrability across that geographical space which is very big the Indo-Pacific right it involves the Pacific the Indian and all the other different seas therein. It complicates the diplomatic and political reach that China has very carefully and at very senior high levels that most Western governments actually don't engage in really tried to cultivate in the last ten years with its partners particularly in the Pacific Islands for instance but also with ASEAN states so it complicates that for China and China has been as I say focusing a lot of effort on that area and then there's the deepening right there's the military to military science to science intelligence to intelligence relationships that are already happening right if you just forget about pillar two and pillar one at the moment those relationships that's what worries China because China knows the value of those exchanges right it's had similar exchanges for instance in the 1990s it had them with the United States scientists on the in the nuclear sphere and they ended and now it's having in with Russia so it values those kinds of things right those are the things that are hurting China I think. So what you're saying is that you know the eventual SSN orcas subs when they come on stream will not necessarily in themselves be gain changes but when you add everything else potentially coming in via pillar two then this really does begin potentially to change the balance between us and China is that what you're saying that's right that's right so earlier it said pillar two has to be a success exactly I mean this is China's way of measuring it right if pillar two is the big threat not pillar one for China right so pillar two you know cooperation hypostomics cyber AI underwater tech what China really worries about is that it could get expanded it could include Australia and Japan working together more closely because China in China's mind there are three big military problems for China the first of these has always been Taiwan right it's primary strategic problem but another one could be a border war over India and a third one for instance in the South China Sea and in all those different scenarios pillar two tech matters hugely for how China can win and fight wars it cannot recreate the naval partners that the United States is developing right it cannot magic up an Australian or Indian Navy from its relationship with North Korea and Pakistan right what it can do though is it can focus on those pillar two technologies and have dominance in the area and this is where orcas comes in because if orcas threatens that pillar two dominance in that tech that's very problematic for China okay let's come back to this because the United States doesn't you know necessarily have an exemplary record in the ease of transfer of technology so let's come back on that Steve can I ask you a question though first about the capacity of the United States to to deliver just staying with pillar one for a moment the replacement of existing subs with US Virginia class subs then of course eventually with the orcas SSNs I mean are we sure that the US has the production capacity to make this delivery whilst meeting its own production and procurement needs at the same time because I think some people have raised a question about this I think that one of the one of the reasons orcas has been successful and so strongly supported by US UK and Australia is it is it in the end it gives you an additional production line that's the whole point if we were simply relying upon UK production line and US production lines then there may not be enough capacity for additional submarine nuclear submarines to be to be produced for Australian utility so one of the key advantages of where we've landed with the with orcas one the so-called optimum pathway is that we do end up with greater capability and as we grow Australia's capability to actually build submarines not the nuclear modular power system itself but to build those submarines we will grow a capability over a period of three decades where we'll be making a contribution and an input to either a UK line or a US line so we're confident that that will hold certainly there's no diminution in either the UK or the US of the commitment and desire and need to continue to produce nuclear powered submarines just a very quick point on why have we moved from conventional to to nuclear well it's because in the end of change strategic circumstance for a long time Australia worked off the basis as Alessio referred to of a ten year warning time and that the the risk that we faced or the threat that we faced was a low to medium level threat from a regional partner and as long as we had a inverted commerce capability edge we would be fine in change strategic circumstances where you see the rise of a great power providing strategic competition to the United States then you have to say okay change strategic circumstances maybe we need a change underwater capability and the big deficiency with conventional submarines in the modern era is at some point in the cycle you have to come up to the surface and snort and these days that is much easier to detect than it was 10 20 years ago so a combination of changing technological capacity particularly surveillance from satellite or space or generally is one of the reasons why we've been we've come to the strategic conclusion this is a capability that we need and in various ways Alessio and Nicola have sort of reinforced that technology point which I think is right and in the technology that you need when the US and the UK supply nuclear propulsion technologies are these going to be black boxed or are they going to be fully transferred to Australia to for Australia to build out from and to use independently the first one of the first things that we have to do is to prove our capacity for nuclear stewardship and that's a long-haul process and that requires lots of investment lots of skills lots of training at this point in the cycle we have no ambition to want to invert a commas build our own nuclear powered module we're entirely happy to allow to allow that to occur by the United States as it occurs with the United Kingdom so that will be modularized and sort of and fitted in and I've seen the inverted commas fitting in at Barrow so it's a highly technical but nonetheless today very successful process so we don't have a civil nuclear industry which we would need to take us down to that step so we're envisaging this as we we we end up doing the build but build around the module and the US famously places pretty tough export restrictions on transferring technology to its partners are those laws going to remain in place in the case in respect of workers what one of the things which is no surprise and no secret to anyone is that in the context of pillar to so for firstly the pillar one submarines there is a transfer of technology agreement obviously otherwise it wouldn't be occurring secondly in terms of August pillar to we're working very hard with the US to essentially say we need to have that technology transfer arrangements as well now for example Canada Paul's where Paul was chief of Navy does have a range of exemptions and exceptions as the United States nearest neighbor and you would expect the same well we expect there will be seamless technology transfer from the United States to the United Kingdom from the United Kingdom to Australia and from Australia from the US and the UK respectively to make August to the advanced technologies work if it's to be a genuine trilateral technology partnership which has success both in outcomes for potential military capability but also for dual use and civilian capability there needs to be that singlessness of technology and that's one of the things we're working very hard on and one of the things that we think we're making progress on Paul is this something that would concern you from your experience or not yes but I think it's being addressed or at least recognize look the the pillar to technologies or capabilities that we in the West have identified that Chinese are developing peer or potentially overmatch capability and this is not this is strategically uncomfortable so the the aim around office pillar to I think is that we have three powers that sit at the bullseye of strategic trust coming together in recognition that there is a that the sort of the 20th century legacy approach to collaboration and acquisition of procurement is no longer fit for purpose and that there is a need to accelerate a more seamless and trust based collaboration that delivers at pace a competitive advantage capability in these areas for the all-domain warfighter driving towards it from interoperability to interchangeability and what is the and what is the most obvious systemic cultural regulatory impediment it's it's it's it's it's it's it's not so for pillar to be successful the the US needs to and we're seeing we're seeing movement in Washington and and and London and Canberra are offering all sorts of constructive advice around how to move this forward but in order for pillar to be successful in order for us to deliver that competitive advantage, new generation of warfighting capability in this decade, the U.S. will need to reform ITAR. And at the end of the day, if a missile flies over Taiwan, I think the first thing that will happen is if ITAR is still an impediment, it will be moved aside, because then we truly will be at action stations, whereas today we talk about urgency. We talk about strategic urgency. We talk about the need to accelerate. We talk about warning time and having evaporated and the need to move now, as in Australia, the whole-of-nation approach that Stephen baked into the defense-strategic review. But we're still not quite there in terms of accepting it across our nations as a need in this decade to be moving forward together at campaign planning. I'm going to come in a moment. I'll just give you a two-minute warning for questions that anyone wants to put to the panel. So, the microphone is coming to you shortly, wherever you are. Let me ask, lastly, then, to you, Alessio, and if I may also to Nicola, I mean, in 20 or 30 years' time, just look ahead, if you will. If AUKUS flourishes, pillar one, pillar two, in the way that we have discussed, if AUKUS flourishes, what might the security architecture of the Indo-Pacific look like over that length of timeframe? So, it's always interesting to ask this question, because if you think about this as an AUKUS, a lot of the sensors that will be on the boat haven't been invented. We don't even know what they will look like, right? Because it's a boat that is going to come out of the line in 25, 30 years, and then it needs to stay around for another 50. So, that's an interesting sort of thing to put things in context. However, on the other hand, we do know, and both Stephen and Paul have been very eloquent about this, that for AUKUS to flourish, the software at the government level, at the industry level, at the military level, at the people-to-people level, will need to be in place. And that is a guarantee, if you want a success. It's an enormous down payment into the long-term success, because you need to remove constructive and restrictive legal frameworks. You have to create a workforce, and it will be an AUKUS generation workforce, right? There's going to be people that are going to be moving around. It's going to be a pretty specialised and trained-up workforce, and a crew, by the way. One under the scent, but let's broaden that out, because at the same time, from a UK perspective, we've got also GCAP, the Global Combat Air Programme, with Japan and Italy, which invites a similar consideration. You're confident that that's going to go ahead, are you? Yes, in part, because a lot of the moving parts for the next generation fighter jets are already in terms of research and development in place, so that actually is going to be theoretically delivered on a slightly shorter time scale than AUKUS is. But the key point about all of this is that once you reach the level of trust and political and industrial integration that is required for these programs to succeed, of course the security architecture is going to be different, because the type of conversation that you will have in the working groups, whether it is quads, whether it is any one of the mini-laterals, or on the margins of other broader gatherings, whether it is as in regional forum, ADMM+, these specific components will see the actors in them, and those who may join, because we haven't talked a lot about the fact that it's an open architecture proposition. Other countries can join. Japan has been very interesting in the conversation about some of the hypersonics elements, and if you look at the Hiroshima codes from last week between the UK and Japan, the next step of thinking is like, well, there is a natural convergence on certain things, whether it is quantum AI, hypersonics, so why not on a project base some of these actors? So you're saying that pillar two, in a sense, is a potential portal through which many other nations might pass and extend the security architecture to embrace many other countries in the Indo-Pacific? Not many, because not many would have the technological know-how to be able to fully take advantage. But you're thinking of what? Japan? Japan for sure. I mean, this conversation to an extent with India, South Korea, Canada. Canada? Yes. And other cornedos. Exactly. But on top of all of this, what you're going to find yourself in a situation, this is a point that Nicola alluded to earlier, is the one thing that if you are the Chinese leadership scares you the most, having sitting at the table, four or five members, states that are so close that there is nothing that you can do to drive a wedge in that relationship. That creates a fabric that is stronger than anything. I'll give you a specific example, a recent experience. Last week at the First Sea Lord Sea Power Conference, which we helped to sort of deliver in part, you have the conversation between the First Sea Lord, the US Navy chief of staff, and the French Navy chief of staff. And they were talking on the back of each other, if I were sitting in Beijing looking at them, I would have a chill bell going down my spine, because I cannot replicate that with anybody. And that is a significant point of distinction. Nicola, what's your 20 to 30 year forward look at the security environment and architecture flowing from AUKUS? Look, 20 to 30 years you're looking at almost 2049. What's 2049? 2049 is a very significant date. It certainly is. It's the 100th centenary of the People's Republic of China, the version of China that we are currently living with. China, of course, has a very long history. So China will become more embattled. Politically, its environment will be a lot harder. Patriotism is high now, expect it to be higher then. Irrespective of who is in charge, and actually I want to make this point quite forcefully, irrespective of who is in charge, whether we have a charismatic leader or an assertive leader, or we have more of a technocrat, China will behave the same, if not worse. In fact, many of the things that we see economically and militarily from China predate Xi Jinping, and they will continue after Xi Jinping. I think what we should expect is probably if AUKUS has been a success, particularly pillar two, then that will mean that China has not been able to pick apart and argue that AUKUS creates negative incidents for things like proliferation and so forth. And of course, AUKUS is not the first arrangement to do so. I think we forget our history. In 2006, the US and India signed a very controversial civilian nuclear agreement that China had a lot of trouble with because India is not a member of the nuclear suppliers group, it's not a member of the NPT, yet it still managed to go ahead and the world still continues. So AUKUS will probably square that circle quite nicely, I'm sure. But the question is whether pillar two and other arrangements do the same, whether they do so flawlessly and bring others along. Like Letio said, whether they bring Japan, which I think China expects South Korea, which would be harder for China to swallow. India, of course, certainly harder. I think we don't have unfortunately an India expert on the panel, but I think India's own sort of independence in this and its own thoughts on this is, I think, harder to lay out as easily as Japan. So what we would see in the future, a closer China-Russia relationship, of course. We would probably see, as I say, an internally more embattled and patriotic China as hard as it might be to envision. We might see even China acting in a more, dare I say, normalized Western way when it comes to its military practices. So for instance, actually just saying, yeah, we do have military bases and we're going to build more of them and we're going to have them in Pakistan, Laos, Cambodia and so forth. So I think that's a very divisive and militaristic future, but it is a potential one, and particularly domestically in China. I think we haven't yet seen China talk as loudly and in such a combative manner as other countries have. So for instance, let me just end with this. The most recent PLA People's Liberation Army Strategic Guidelines were published in 2019. These did not really take into account the idea of the Indo-Pacific, because at that point in time China still did not officially accept it. China now does. The 2019 Strategic Guidelines, they did not take into account AUKUS. Now if AUKUS is a success and China now sort of has come to some level of toleration and accommodation with the term Indo-Pacific as a geographical strategic space, then we will see some very hard-hitting national laws and also PLA Strategic Guidelines that we have not yet experienced. And China is actually, and I always say this to all my students, is actually very transparent. You just need to read the language. They will be talking in a much harder language, and we should probably all prepare ourselves for that moving forward, and I'll end on that note. OK. Who has over here, let's have a mic down this gentleman and then behind you. Thank you very much. I'm Tom Clouse Pritchard from the Pinsker Centre. We're delighted to sponsor this conference, to be one of the sponsors. We're very happy you're sponsoring it too. Thank you. We spoke a little bit about sort of political sustainability moving forward with AUKUS in Australia. I'd be very interested to get the panel's views on the political sustainability of AUKUS going forward in the United States. I was at a conference last year in California where I met a young man in the Republican Party. I was talking to AUKUS about him, talking to him about AUKUS. And he said, oh yeah, was that when we really screwed over the French? And I said, I said jokingly, as an Englishman, well that was really the main appeal for us. But I think... You said jokingly. Of course. Of course, yes. But yeah, sustainability politically of AUKUS in the United States. Well, sustainability in the United States, I mean, they're pretty much in clever, aren't they? I mean, in trade, investment, procurement terms. If I can answer that or respond to that question just by segueing in on what's the world going to look like in 2049 or 2050. OK. Because I think that's an important reference point. If all of the currents of economic projections hold true, then by the time we get to 2050, China, India, United States and Indonesia will be the four largest economies in the world. They're all in the Indo-Pacific. The Indo-Pacific will continue to be the area of economic and as a consequence, strategic heft. And China, more likely than not, will be the largest economy and the one with the most heft. And what we're trying to do now is to send signals which say, look, for the vast bulk of the post-World War II era, the Indo-Pacific has been a place for peace and prosperity and we want that to continue. But for the first time, we're seeing a genuine great power rise in strategic competition with another great power. How do we manage that so that it doesn't end in disaster? And what we're seeing is a series of, in a sense, of concentric, over-lacking circles to send that signal and that message which is about the United States doesn't stand by itself in a strategic competition with China. There are other equities and interests in the Indo-Pacific and you see that reflected by AUKUS, you see it reflected by the Quad, you see it reflected by the United Kingdom being a party to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Who would have thought in 2007, 2008, when we started, Australia started thinking about the Trans-Pacific Partnership that by 2023, 2024, the UK would be the second-biggest economy in it? And so all of Europe, including the UK, the Indo-Pacific Reference Point has a, what's the central strategic interest and issue here, which is China and the way China conducts itself as a rules-based international player. And so what we're trying to do is to grow these sort of concentric circles. East Asia Summit is another one, which LSEO referred to, which is the best piece of Indo-Pacific architecture where everyone's in the same room at the same time. In terms of U.S., sort of, if you like, political sustainability, we all have our moments of political instability. Australia had it, UK had it, United States had it. I can't think what you're referring to. Maybe it's just an erroneous perception held by a colonial relic. But we all have our periods of sort of political instability or political moment. But in the end, we're all large economies, we're large multinational players, we're large bilateral and pluralatural players. And all of our economies and all of our nations, I'm very confident, will sustain well beyond 2049, 2050. But what we're trying to do is, how do we configure ongoing peace and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific, which has joined everyone now, I think, acknowledges with the Euro-Atlantic Theatre, how do we keep that prosperity going? And to Australia, it is finding as many like-minded partners to have what our foreign minister described as a regional balancing strategy so that if a large power wants to do something outside of the rules of the road, there are risks associated with that. Now, in the end, that can be backed up by diplomacy, but ultimately, it needs to be backed up by the perception, if not the reality, of military capability to stare down the notion that might is always right. And in parenthesis, which of the two countries is more likely to seek to come back into now the TPP? America or China? Well, I think the single most adverse blunder that U.S. policy has made in the last 25 years was to effectively withdraw from the TPP, and all of us should be urging our U.S. counterparts to get right back into it. That's the single most important error of Indo-Pacific engagement that the United States have made, and it's ongoing, and needs to be rectified. You didn't quite answer my question, but I agree with you on the point you make. Just over here. And then we'll come to you subsequently. Good afternoon. I'm Olivier Guitard. I'm the managing director of GlobalStrat. I'm going to address the elephant in the room to piggyback on the previous question and talking about the French. I think there was a huge blunder made by the Alliance not to include the French in that alliance. France is the most present country in the Indo-Pacific. If you look at Macron's declarations before the cancellation of the contract of the century, he was very archish on China, and you have made him a dove. I think that the whole flak about including France in that alliance could have been extremely helpful, and I think G is laughing all the way to the bank, that you pushed away the French and got Macron to become a dove. OK, we've got the question. What's the answer? I'll help you. I'll help you. And then we'll start with the European response. Exactly. Blame the foreigner. Keep it in the family. Keep it in the family. Two quick points. And then they are related. On the previous question, I think there is also, we shouldn't forget the semantic effect of pillar two. We haven't talked about it, but pillar two is designed to deliver sooner, and that will create a semantic effect in terms of political, corraling political support across the three countries for continuity. And the second question there is also the strategic challenge is not going to go away. So yes, political aspirations may change, but the main reason for August to exist in the first place is not going to go away. And the semantic effect of the conversation around corraling industrial cooperation over the three countries, if not more, will certainly create an opportunity for that to happen. OK. But on this question of France, I don't think that France was left over. So first of all, you don't think France was left out of it? Because the door on pillar two is absolutely open. That's one. Of course, pillar one is an exclusive sort of type of project that sees the three countries together. And it seems to me that that's been now well understood. We have to separate between the rollout of the announcement over August, which certainly was not done in a way that apparently the French government was prepared for it. But I think now the relationship has moved on because of France-Australia relationships now are back on track. There is a new announcement about the importance of the strategic relationship between the two. And I think, in part, the overcoming pillar one problem, it's because of the centrality of pillar two. So France could come back via pillar two, do you think? Or is that...? Well, I think generally on pillar two are new partners. We should not get the cart before the horse. Let the three orcas partners, you know, sort of get it strategically gripped up and working before anyone else interested. But on France, look, firstly, when France was chosen by the previous government to build the conventional submarine, there was more than one commentator or people who'd followed submarines for a long period of time who thought that was the highest risk project. That's the first point. Secondly, in the end, that highest risk project came to fruition. Thirdly, there were a number of off-ramps which was open to Australia under contractual terms to effect. In the event, Australia effected one of them. Now, it probably wasn't the most elegant or diplomatic way of doing it, but nonetheless, there was a contractual off-ramp which was open to Australia to take. And it did. I think the current government has worked very hard and the current prime minister has worked very hard to restore and re-establish a strong Australia-France relationship. And that is very important to Australia because as the question of rightly pointed out, France has more assets and strategic equity in the Indo-Pacific than any other European country with New Caledonia. And not only do I acknowledge, I make the point repeatedly that when France got the nuclear, sort of the conventional submarine contract, it was very forward-leaning in saying, we see this not just as a capability project. We want to be an integral part of the Indo-Pacific. We want to be working closely with you strategically. And I think the current government has done a lot, and the current prime minister with the president has done a lot to bring that back to a workable level. Okay, very last question. I'm sorry, just thank you. Very quick, please. Okay, very quickly. My question is about safeguards. Weapons grade. China is volling at last two papers in the last NPT review conference and in a lot of papers and the agents that the ALCOs and the party of SSN compromises the NPT because the uranium used in S90G or PWR2 reactors are at weapons grade. So it's like something transferring nuclear material for weapons to a non-nuclear weapon states and this compromise the NPT. What do you think about this? Paul? The Australian government has been very careful to invite IAEA in on several locations to very transparently and openly address some of these concerns and the Australian government, I think Stephen has been assured that the sort of supposition that you're presenting your question is not one that we should be concerned about. In addition, also some of the South East Asian actors that have been like Indonesia and Malaysia have been relatively more skeptical about that. They're now changing their positions slightly precisely because of the recognition that the work done in engaging all the authorities of atomic energy have been satisfied. I think it was the first organisation that the three governments approached precisely to make sure that the transfer would actually reinforce the non-proliferation treaties rather than undermine their validity. OK. Peter, can I just jump in one last time before the panel closes? Sorry, Nicola. Sorry. That's OK. I mean, just to add to that, as I say, there is precedence within the nuclear field and actually the nuclear field is one of my areas that I've worked on for a long time and one of the discussions right now is actually around low and rich uranium rather than HEU, high and rich uranium in addition to, I think, all because perhaps going above and beyond and it needs to go above and beyond even if it legally doesn't need to, it needs to go above and beyond in terms of sort of entering into some sort of special demonstration of safeguards in place because of the uniqueness of this because they don't want to create precedence an example for others to follow. Thanks. Last 30 seconds. Very quickly on the IAEA, Australia is engaged from day one with the IAEA and given a clean tick, clean tick available. Just what we haven't mentioned in the course of this conversation, we've spoken a lot about AUKUS growing capability. What we haven't spoken about is China's military modernisation and the growth in its capability. China every year adds to its navy surface fleet a number of ships which is greater than Australia's combined surface fleet. So and there's no transparency of intent. There's no transparency of capability built and there's certainly no transparency about what they're using to power their nuclear submarines of which they have a handsome program moving forward. Okay. Thank you very much indeed all of you. I must say that if I had two things I took away from this panel, it is that one region's strengthened capability in the Indo-Pacific can work to the strategic advantage of the Euro-Atlantic and we shouldn't see them as separate or in competition. Secondly, Pillar 2 is a rather interesting portal through which a lot of close working relationships, habits of exchanging technology, growing that software that we talked about might pass in the future. And I think that is two very interesting points. Thank you all very much. Thank you. If you please take a seat. We heard this morning from the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and I'm absolutely delighted that we're now going to hear from the Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, John Healy who is in conversation with Professor John Geerson of King's College London. Thank you. Good afternoon. As Ian mentioned, my name is John Geerson and I'm Head of the School of Security Studies who are co-hosting this conference this afternoon. I'm very pleased to have the Labour Party's Shadow Defence Secretary with us this afternoon to talk about a range of things. I'm going to ask a few questions and we can hand this to our student body for some of these conversations and they've provided some tough questions which I'll be turning to in a few minutes if that's okay and we'll see where we get to as we're moving on. In fact, our students usually start with a really tough one which I might start actually with the student one because it's so broad. It's great. It's the sort of question they ask us quite often with the start of a 10. What are Labour's long-term Defence and Security Strategic Objectives who have written? Nothing too specific there. I guess they follow it by saying in realistic terms, given that traditionally Defence has been an area of less policy divergence. I think the last election was unusual in that there was probably a wider divergence between the two main parties. How do Labour Government's approach come from the current government? Okay, John, thank you for the invitation. Thank you all for staying the course this far. I'm not sure whether I should be thanking your students for the questions, given that's the first of a series of tough ones, but thank you to the students also for the way that they've as volunteers marshaled this conference and it's been really good to be able to speak to one or two of them on the margins of the conference and I have to say to you if these are our future policy makers, potentially our politicians, our analysts and our industry leaders we're in good hands. Thank you. Labour Defence and Security Priorities I suppose I'd say five and you might want to pick some of them up. First to secure Britain as Europe's leading nation within NATO. Second to reinforce the UK-US relationship as our closest and most important security ally. Third to rebuild relations with some of our important European NATO allies that have been damaged during the Brexit process Germany, France, Poland and sometimes willfully so in the Brexit process alongside looking to strike a level of cooperation UK and EU with potentially an EU-UK Defence and Security pact. In other words to restore the ambition that was in the political declaration that Boris Johnson took off the negotiating table in the TCA period. So that's three. Four I want Defence to play a leading part in Labour's ambition to make, sell, export more from Britain. And fifth, I think after 13 years ours is a nation whose moral contract with those who serve and their families has become corroded. It requires renewal. We will go into the election with a plan for that and that will include fully incorporating the Armed Forces Covenant into law. It's a five principle Defence and Security strategic objectives. OK, thanks. I'll come back to Europe and some other areas after that. Let me just press you a little bit more another student-led question which is what could we expect of the Defence budget under a Labour administration? The Prime Minister this morning talked about being at 2.25% talking up the fact that Britain was just approaching the NATO target despite not reaching it in many respects, saying that the direction of travel was to 2.5 in the medium term. I know you don't want to come out with your manifesto commitments at this stage but could you see, I think you've spoken about a need for investment in Defence for articles and speeches can you see an incoming Labour Government with lots and lots of demands on the public purse actually being able to exceed a 2.5 target? Two Prime Ministers ago we were talking about 4% at one stage now we're back in that sort of NATO average. Where is thinking within the Labour Party on the realities given where we are with Ukraine Russia? Well, first of all it's a pretty good rule to judge politicians by what they do rather than what they say. Our current spending on defences around 2.1% of GDP Rishi Sunak was talking about 2.25 over the next few years and what he calls a longer term aspiration as fiscal and economic circumstances allow for 2.5. My starting point Keir Starmer's starting point will be that Labour will always spend what's required on defence when we left government 13 years ago in 2010 we were spending in this country 2.5% of GDP on defence and that's a level that's never been close to getting matched in any of the 13 years since. The difficulty in opposition and having spent some time in government including at the Cabinet many years in opposition the basic asymmetry that's there between government and opposition is particularly pronounced in the defence and security field. So we simply don't have access to the detailed information about threat assessments our own capabilities, wheel costs which is why I've given the undertaking that in year 1 of a future Labour government we would undertake a defence and security review a strategic review and we would make our decisions about budgets and about priorities off the back of that. Okay I was going to hold this up for later but actually as you've ended on that point and with a commitment to review academics love that as something to analyse and comment on and I've spent 30 years writing about defence reviews so I'm looking forward to another one whichever party wins the next election but we've had an integrated review we've had a refresh to the integrated review could you say a little bit about what you think you'd retain from the integrated review and perhaps areas that you think are likely to be subject to quite a close assessment during your review. Sure but firstly I don't think you're going to be able to work on whatever the result of the election because I think the current government has said in 2025 they would undertake a further defence and security strategic review. In large part I have to say that's because the big difficult decisions have all been kicked beyond the next election and the next couple of years and the financial context for the defence command paper the refresh of that that the defence secretary has promised next month is really tough because before the spring budget in March he needed £8 billion over the next two years just to cover for inflation he got £5 billion but that was earmarked for nuclear and for stockpiles so no new money to cover inflation no new money to deal with capability gaps no new money to deal with and respond to increased threats so this is going to be a really tough period and I think some of the indications that we got from the Prime Minister this morning about full time armed forces numbers I think we need to take seriously. Integrated review well I have to say that I think I probably reflect on three major major changes all of which I have we were arguing hard for the first is I think between the 2021 2023 Integrated Reviews we have happily left that gung-ho going alone Britain in the world bombast that we had from Boris Johnson when he launched the Integrated Review in 2021 behind Global Britain is mentioned once in the 2023 version and that is in reference to its title two years earlier I think the reason for that quite rightly has been especially in light of Putin's invasion of Ukraine this has reminded us of the fact that our allies are our strategic strength and I think that has been part of the welcome wiring of the 2023 Integrated Review the second is that there has been I think quite rightly a recognition of the need to rebuild relations with key European allies we have seen that in the number of bilateral memoranda of understanding defence declarations and cooperation agreements there is still a lack of substance to many of those and there is a lack of determination to strike a fresh framework for cooperation between the UK and the EU and then I think the third is a sense that the Indo-Pacific tilt has been delivered, that is what it concluded in 2023 and principally by non-military means now I have always argued we want the Integrated Review to make the right calls we want this to be a strategy for Britain not just the strategy of the Conservative Ministers that happen to be in government at the time so on all those three changes we can certainly build and we certainly would build as a Labour government the final thing just to reflect however is that I see if you wanted to summary this 2023 Integrated Review as a necessary rebalancing of and rectifying of the flaws in this 2021 Integrated Review it is not the reboot of defence planning or spending that we've seen 25 other NATO nations undertake since Putin invaded Ukraine and that if you like is the some of the big decisions that have been kicked down the road until after the next election for whichever government John happens to be elected by the British public I was interested in you talking about rebuilding defence cooperation with the EU I just wondered whether there's a danger that you might be re-fighting arguments frankly almost a decade old in pursuing that line we've got NATO expansion that we've been discussing here this morning quite unprecedented big geopolitical changes this is all post-Brexit and there's a lot of defence cooperation going on in Europe and the EU seems to be the the forum for cooperation on security but defence does seem and you yourself have talked about five minutes ago Britain is a leading NATO European member moving forward I just wonder whether there's a danger that they will get trapped in a conversation that frankly has moved on by focusing on that because European defence does seem to have got a direction now which we didn't have before the invasion of Ukraine first I think it's a necessary conversation and a necessary area of cooperation for the UK with the EU but second I've argued for a NATO first policy it is the cornerstone of our collective defence and security it is where the locus of UK leadership should lie and that's lacking at the moment and so our first priority for our armed forces must be where the threats are greatest and that's in the Europe North Atlantic and Arctic the NATO area if you like and so that's the importance and first priority of NATO for any incoming Labour government but you have to say that the European Union has in response to Putin's invasion of Ukraine demonstrated there are things that it can do principally in the security field and on the economic sanctions but also with some of the military cooperation for instance the programme to fund and manufacture a million shells for Ukraine so as NATO itself recognises there has to be a complementary relationship it needs to be settled and that requires leadership on both sides especially from the NATO side so another question from the students if I may and there were a lot of suggested questions about Ukraine as you might have expected it's quite a long question unfortunately but I think it's worth trying to go through some of the things that our students think are important so they want to know whether your priorities are essentially humanitarian or political in supporting Ukraine there's been a focus on the hard end by the current government in supporting Ukraine militarily they ask whether a Labour government would be pushing much more for a peace deal with Russia which might involve compromises such as Crimea in return for security assurances and they ask whether Labour would actually support potentially a Ukrainian application to NATO Yeah, at least half a dozen questions in that one I said it was a long question Our first and overriding priority is military not humanitarian because that's first and foremost the priority for the Ukrainians and that is based on deeper values it's based on a recognition and the fighting for is consistent with the values that we believe they're fighting for freedom they're fighting for the right as a sovereign country to determine their own future they're fighting for the right to determine their own government as well as their own nation's future and when I went to Kiev a month before the Russian invasion was launched in January 2022 I met with a former Prime Minister there and he said Western unity is Ukraine's best defence and I was able to say to him there and then the UK will be united there will be total unity in the UK to stand with Ukraine and confront Russian aggression because we recognised and understand that Putin's ambitions don't stop at Ukraine that he is a dictator looking to redraw national boundaries by force and he leads a regime which has contempt for international institutions humanitarian law, rules of military conflict and that despite the heroic bravery and extraordinary success of Ukraine in pushing back defending their territory so far it seems to me that Putin's strategic aims haven't changed that we face a long term not just conflict in Ukraine but wider Russian aggression and menacing of European security and that a this will be a problem for the next government to deal with so on the question of what next our first priority must be to support Ukraine in every way to defend their values and their country and we're not fighting we don't get to call when the fighting stops on negotiations start our duty at that point is to give Ukraine the support in negotiations or any sort of future that we're working at at the moment and the government has had Labour's fullest support for the military help that we've been giving Ukraine I'm proud that the UK has led the way with training, with tanks, long range missiles but I want to be proud again of the first time in 12 months time of the UK leadership I worry about the momentum behind the UK support and I have been concerned that too often we've had announcements that are ad hoc of military support often coinciding with a prime ministerial visit or meeting or a defence or foreign secretary conference one of the things that I've been pushing the government for is what was promised actually back in August last year a 2023 plan for Ukraine military, humanitarian diplomatic support that we will provide why is that important for a number of reasons first of all it will help reassure Ukraine that our support will continue second I will help kick our own industry to manufacture the supplies that will allow us to do that third like our leadership to date it will help encourage allies to do more and fourth most important perhaps it will signal to Putin that things will get worse not better for Russia in the longer run okay I'm going to push you a little bit more I mean ultimately most people believe that essentially deterrence failed in terms of Russia and we can point to the points at which that started to occur but let's look forward how would a British government a British Labour government perhaps ensure conventional conventional deterrence could operate in a post war Ukraine how can we deter Russia from just doing it again in 5 or 10 years after a ceasefire or even some sort of peace deal how can Europe not find itself in this situation again well I think one of the shocks to our system and to NATO thinking from Ukraine has reinforced the case for strong deterrence and for as part of demonstrating strong deterrence the importance of numbers and of readiness so in terms of labour thinking one of the features that I'm or if you like the things I'm urging Ben Wallace to do in his defence command paper is halt any further cuts to the British army when threats are increasing further cuts to army numbers are the wrong plan at the wrong time and when NATO is increasing to take the lesson from Ukraine it's high readiness force to 300,000 it is perverse that Britain at the same time is looking to and planning to cut the strength of our full time forces further and it seems to me that this is driven by costs not threats and it seems to me that this is sad to say a result of the defence secretary's failure to win the new money from VMOD that is needed to deal with the threats that we face OK, thank you the other most raised question by the students, by the way I'm hiding behind my students but it was genuinely from them was I think that there is let's say there is a bit of confusion certainly in our student body about your policy on Indo-Pacific and AUKUS you quoted a speech by David Lambie about the tilt causing an imbalance in UK geopolitical priorities and what they, I think the best question summarises it, it said if a Labour government imposes increased commitments to the Indo-Pacific tilt how would a Labour prime minister respond to a systemic threat posed by China? Well it's a systemic challenge, it's a systemic competitor Rishi Sunak explains some of the emerging thinking that we've had from the government some of it reflected in the integrated review some of it encouraged by us on the opposition benches and we by the way endorse his resistance to some of the voices in his own party to designate China simply as a threat that's the right judgement I think as a country we're still coming out of that period where we were dazzled by what one of Rishi Sunak's predecessors described as the golden era of relations with China as far as our approach as a Labour government goes on AUKUS 100% behind AUKUS so from opposition that the Australian Labour Party did at the time when they were in opposition before they won the election and they haven't changed very much as we heard in our previous panel of the policy since No absolutely, so they've doubled down it's a strategic significance it's an industrial significance it's of the deepest possible strategic and industrial significance there is a massive challenge for us on AUKUS in this country I don't want to deal with it at length because you've had a panel on that but just to say two things if we simply see this as a submarine building challenge rather than a national enterprise we will fail we'll fail the US and we'll fail Australia as our strategic allies here BAE systems employ 11,000 people in Barrow scale that up to 17,000 they already employ one in three of the working age population in that town this is not simply a skills problem this is about Barrow as a new garden city, rapid rail links we've got to see this as a national endeavour and a long term commitment and it needs big thinking and I worry at the moment that the locus of leadership on AUKUS in Britain is unclear I think we miss Steven Lovegrove who did a great deal of the work up to December last year when he left Government and it's not clear to me that we've got the leadership that's required. The second side is that just as important but without the again the sense of leadership and certainly without the policy or political objectives is the pillar two potential I'd like to see the Government spell out the way that we can help forge the way ahead in Britain on pillar two if they don't head of the election and we get elected we will have to do that on the end of Percewik more widely two or three reflections I suppose really I think Ukraine's shown us that the coalition of countries that support Ukraine's fight isn't just located in North America or in Europe so some of our closest most reliable allies in supporting Ukraine have been in the Indo-Pacific and they worry and we share those concerns about the rising military force and the increasing assertiveness and aggression of China and we should and we would as a Labour Government support those allies in every way we can through technology, through capability through diplomacy and yes through closer industrial collaboration like on the AUKUS program but I've urged a degree of realism about our military commitments in the Indo-Pacific especially at a time when our forces are stretched I think they're badly served by leaders who pretend they can do everything everywhere in the world and the support that we can give to allies the contribution we can make to the strategic security balance in the Indo-Pacific is powerful in ways other than straightforward military deployments OK I've got time I want to raise two more things with you in the time left to us and they actually relate to things that you raised in your terms your priorities in this British first approach and in fact it's something that was raised by the students this idea of directing investment towards British industry in these international collaborative projects is this really effective and do you think it's going to actually deliver what the UK does there's lots of experience where we end up not quite buying off the shelf certainly not but we end up actually being in very complex international consortia not procuring well sometimes not procuring things that we've spent a long time on do you really believe the actual British defence sector is capable of providing you with this equipment I do it can be it hasn't been in recent years and largely because we've dealt with defence acquisition and procurement on a contract by contract basis competition and cost has ruled all else and if you wanted one or two hallmarks of the way that that would I think needs to change by the way whichever party wins the next election first of all when we're spending as a nation at least £20 billion a year of taxpayers money British taxpayers money the British taxpayer has I think a right to expect more bangs for that buck so if we can direct British investment first to British companies and British jobs we should and defence acquisition should not be essentially an isolated area of policy and I'd want to see it as a centrepiece of a modern industrial policy that does more to make selling by in Britain third the collaboration is clearly required on big big projects but we have too often driven too poor a bargain on the work share the leveraged investment for the contracts we place with either American or companies from other countries we can do better on that the fourth I think finally is we've sometimes lost sight in the specifications of what we're looking for of the capabilities that are required by those forces on the front line of course high tech will reinforce the capability in the longer term but we need to be able to and Ukraine tells us this we need to be able to commission some of the now tech needed not just the high tech needed for the future I mentioned 30 years in commentary on defence procurement initiatives with parties good luck you've offered this you did a report three years ago on whole force the whole force concept that was essentially an argument that if you want a country to be secure and capable for the future you have to have government working alongside a strategic partnership and long term partnership with your leading industry players that hasn't been happening and it's part of what needs to happen in the future and if ever we need a lesson and a wake up call to do that surely Ukraine and the longer term challenge of China as well that was my concluding question we started late but we're running over a bit and that was this mobile components in the armed forces I will put this to you that is a noble objective but it will only be effective if you actually apply this to the whole force that you've just raised the whole defence sector that delivers capability for the UK I don't know how you feel about that or do you want to focus on the armed services initially on this idea of the moral component we have to do more on the moral component it's not acceptable it's not viable if your satisfaction ratings are less than 50% of those who are serving it is completely unacceptable that 40% of our forces accommodation is in the lowest possible category and 4,000 of our forces personnel are living in accommodation that is so poor even the MOD won't charge them any rent on it now that's if you like a symptom of how we've allowed this contract with those who serve to be corroded over the recent years and we've got to renew that as I said I think it's also about trying to extend that to the reserves but also the civil servants who support it and of course partners in the industry well thank you for fielding my students questions and my questions very much and we look forward to you taking an active part in the policy debates in the run up to the election I look forward to that too thank you good afternoon ladies and gentlemen could I call you to order we have a particular treat this afternoon anyone who has had the experience of visiting Poland before the wall came down and has subsequently visited the country will be astonished as I have been by the extraordinary economic transformation that has taken place and this is given Poland not only an extraordinary exciting future but at the moment a considerable amount and a growing amount of economic heft within Europe as well as more broadly and I think that that resultant economic and political heft has not been entirely without controversy within the European Union more pertinent to us this afternoon is the extraordinary transformation in Poland's military capability based on not a 2.1 or 2.25 whichever of the two statistics we've earlier had heard today of our own defence expenditure but a full 4% of Polish GDP and I think rising the importance of Poland which was increasing anyway has been of course greatly underlined by the crisis in Ukraine where they have been a leading voice in advocating maximum support for Ukraine and not only have they used their voice but they have backed it up by action they have been an increasingly important part of that effort and it is a part they are playing in full today not only militarily but by accommodating the enormous number of Ukrainian refugees on their territory so we are extraordinarily honoured and lucky to have with us this afternoon the President of Poland President Duda who we welcome and are delighted that he's made time to address us this afternoon Ladies and gentlemen the President of Poland Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen excellency thank you very much for your kind words and thank you very much for this invitation this really unique opportunity for me to participate in this London Defence Conference and to share with you some opinions and some thoughts about challenges we have ahead of us so Ladies and gentlemen on February the 24th we woke up to a totally new reality it was February the 24th 2022 the Russian aggression forced many to redefine their so for policy that thought of a war in Europe with discriminant killing of civilians bombardments of residential buildings schools and hospitals was hard to believe too many and still that is exactly what happened after the 24th of February last year I wish to remind you that unfortunately it's nothing new for Russian imperial policy Central and Eastern Europe remembers the terror under the Russian occupation at the time of the Iron Curtain we also recall the wars in Chechnya Georgia and Moldova which followed after 1991 therefore the current aggression against Ukraine and the attempt by the Kremlin to suppress the sovereignty of the Ukrainian people comes as no surprise to us as early as 2014 we knew that Russia would not stop Chechnya, Donetsk and Ugańsk ladies and gentlemen in a broader view the aim of the Kremlin is to regain control over the so called post-Soviet zone and destroy the current world order for putting the West was weak and disunited there were a few reasons of that assessment the major ones were political and economic factors the West was afraid that the strong reaction might cause big turbulences in political relations moreover many states were concerned about losing lucrative contracts with Russia many in the West fooled themselves thinking that in the area of extensive economic connections gigantic projects such Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 it would be impossible to make a step further and take a decision to invade which would shatter all of that meanwhile Russia was testing for decades how far it could go using its various forms of aggression and how much the West would allow it to do gentlemen expansion expansion that is exactly the priority of the Russian policy an attempt to subdue others by means of blackmail, conquest force and terror the Kremlin is ready to pursue that goal no matter what the cost for those who still have doubts if Russia stops in Ukraine let me remind the words of the former Russian president Medvedev who said clearly the aim of the war in Ukraine is to undermine the current world order built after the second world war and establish the new one he has said I have no doubt that this new world order would be against the values that are of importance to us it would be based on aggression, fear and total control there would be no respect for freedom of citizens the value of human life the rule of law and democracy ladies and gentlemen we must redefine once again the so far perception of threats this moment is especially crucial for Europe which has to stand up to the biggest challenge since the second world war we must be united in showing that we do not accept an aggression in the 21st century we have to stress loud and clear that we do not agree to the violation of international law which that established based on our shared values of freedom equality sovereignty and independence of nations let us also bear in mind that today's conflict in Europe has a much broader dimension Russian aggression has global consequences it's proved by the crisis Russia has caused and food ones they affect Asia, Africa and the Middle East alike in the long term this crisis will spill over and impact all regions of the world ruin our economies and hinder the development of states our resolute response should also be a signal to those who adhere to different principles and are inspired by the Kremlin's activities weak opposition will serve as an incentive for those potentially aggressive countries to start actions in other regions of the globe which may be harmful for all of us that's why our response has to be swift, strong and efficient distinguished guests ladies and gentlemen Poland understands this perfectly well that's why since the launch of the Russian invasion we have been supporting Ukraine in international forums seeking backing for Kiev as well as condemnation and sanctioning of the Kremlin we have been supplying extensive aid both in Poland and in Ukraine let us remember that more than 15 million people have left Ukraine since the outbreak of war of which almost 12 million cross the border with Poland most of them are elderly persons women and children they found shelter in Polish homes welcomed by Polish families and not in refugee camps frankly there was no need to build refugee camps because all the people who came from Ukraine they found accommodation among Polish families in Polish houses in Polish homes thank you thank you very much over the last year we were able to set up a huge logistic hub in Poland which allows for the transfer of humanitarian and military assistance to Ukraine for those who are not willing to leave their homeland and whose households were destroyed we have established along with our British friends a temporary container town in Lviv however as before we are not going to bring the hostilities to an end by means of political and humanitarian support only hence Poland is one of the biggest suppliers of military equipment for the fighting Ukrainians up until now we have provided over 300 battle tanks hundreds of infantry fighting vehicles artillery systems mortars and anti-aircraft capabilities we have equipped thousands of Ukrainian soldiers with Polish-made wrought assault rifles and millions of ammunition shells of various types we were also one of the first states to hand over our MiG jets to Ukrainian pilots these aircraft to protect the skies against Russian attacks with fights ranging in Ukraine we along with other partners continue to train new Ukrainian recruits as part of the EU mission having said all of that I wish to thank the United Kingdom for all its involvement support and most importantly the tank coalition ladies and gentlemen after the victory we will face the task of holding the guilty ones to account for the war crimes committed we will also have to help Ukraine to reconstruct the country I count on Poland playing a leading role in this respect as we have relevant assets which will facilitate the process what I mean is first of all our geographical as well as social and cultural proximity what is more we know what kind of reforms are required in state that was politically and economically dominated by Russia it's also part of our history ladies and gentlemen the situation across the region forces us like never before to join efforts in strengthening the North Atlantic alliance which needs to deter the aggressor effectively of key importance in this respect will be the Vilnius summit decisions Poland has the following priorities one boosting the defense potential of the eastern flag by increasing the number of NATO troops deployed there two reforming NATO response force along with the Madrid summit decisions by implementing the new force model and scaling up the high readiness forces from 40 up to 300,000 troops three establishing multi-corps land component command in Poland based on the operational command and for motivating all allies to increase their defense spending and let me stress all allies we must bear in mind that NATO forces are not just the US troops it's our joint potential contributed by each and every member of the alliance let me recall that if we want article 5 to provide iron clad security guarantees than the provisions of article 3 have to be strictly followed and article 3 stipulates that every one of us each NATO member has to individually maintain and develop their capacity to resist armed attack in order to effectively deter an aggressor what we need is not only the effort of the alliance as a whole but also our own one we keep bolstering our defense potential in order to meet allied commitments we are spending on defense preparing modern legislative solutions expanding and modernizing our armed forces forming new units and providing them with modern equipment integrated with that of our allies at the same time we take note of emerging threats that is why we continue to develop our capabilities across all domains including especially in cyberspace all of it is costly but the Polish society understands why we are developing our armed forces and why we are helping Ukraine by supplying it with part of our equipment for Poles know perfectly well that the cost would be even higher if Ukraine lost I'm glad that we are not alone and we are developing capabilities along with our strong allies Polish-British military cooperation is historically important and it goes decades back currently our forces are involved in allied operations and exercises around the globe Polish soldiers serve in NATO commands in the UK whereas the British ones do the same in Poland in 2022 British engineering troops helped to protect Polish border in the aftermath of the Bielarussian hybrid attack moreover starting this year we have a British company of Challenger 2 tanks deployed in Poland as well as soldiers stationed together with the Sky Saber air defense system we are implementing a number of bilateral projects as part of the military technology collaboration and by doing so we maintain a dialogue which contributes to a stronger industry and a robust defense capabilities together we can do more therefore I appreciate the so far engagement of the British on the European continent both on bilateral as well as allied level ladies and gentlemen dear friends as I mentioned at the beginning of my speech the challenging international situation today requires our involvement also beyond our region we must start to talk together with the countries of the global south especially Africa I see a special rule for Poland in this respect whom they consider a credible partner lack of my country's colonial past might help us all in these contacts distinguished guests ladies and gentlemen in order to restore the global order based on our shared rules of equality, respect and sovereignty with respect for international law we must respond to aggression in the united way and discourage anyone willing to try and change the world by force Europe must stay united to help Ukraine it's only with our help that the end of this war will be possible it's only with our help that those guilty of the committed war crimes rapes, murders the destruction of houses hospitals and schools will be held to account we must also be open towards other regions in the world in this way to jointly bring back stability and international security I thank the United Kingdom for its cooperation to ensure security in Europe thank you for supporting Ukraine and for your clear stance on the Russian aggressor we are strong in the alliance we are strong together thank you very much thank you Mr President I'm the reminder of the contribution that Poland is making not only in Europe and in the Ukrainian crisis but more broadly and I for one certainly took to heart your most interesting suggestion about your role as your possible role in Africa we should think more about that thank you for coming and thank you for what you said to us thank you so much for the final and the best session of this first day my name is Deborah Haynes I'm the security and defence editor at Sky News and I have a very eminent panel to talk about NATO and European security I'm going to sort of introduce everybody they're not going to give spills as a journalist I've been told I'm allowed to ask a few questions which is great and then I'm going to open it up for audience questions so if you wouldn't mind when that happens you stick your hand up and introduce yourself and your question and direct it at who you'd like it to be asked to that would be great so we have a Lord Zedwell who you will all know the previous national security adviser and former cabinet secretary eminent career in the civil service before that we have Ruth Deermont who is an expert in post-Soviet studies here at King's College we have Jeremy Greaves who is vice president of Airbus and a renowned expert in defence industry and a late stand-in very kindly we have Peter Watkins who has a long career in the civil service at the MOD and is now a visiting professor here at King's too so brilliant panel to talk about European NATO security and off the back of that very interesting speech from the Polish president and also this morning that speech from our Prime Minister different tones I'm sure you'll agree with Poland agreeing to spend 4% this year of its GDP on defence the British Prime Minister very clearly saying they're moving up to 2.25% and then 2.5% when fiscal circumstances allow I thought with the NATO summit in Vilnius on the horizon in July Mark would you want to give some thoughts on what you think deterrence is going to need to look like going forward into the next 10 years deterrence in particular against Russia in the wake of the full-scale invasion thanks very good to be here and thanks for having a chance to be on the panel I think there are essentially two elements to deterrence in the aftermath of Ukraine the first is that the Ukrainians themselves have demonstrated the Russians can be contested defeated militarily and it's quite clear that up against NATO in a purely conventional battle we certainly should be able to overwhelm them I think that means that we have to change NATO doctrine on deterrence if you think back to the Cold War fundamentally we had a much deeper expert in this than I but we essentially retained the option of first use of nuclear weapons to offset what we perceive to be a conventional imbalance in favour of the Soviet Union that's no longer true and therefore we need to beef up NATO's conventional defence and thus deterrence I think that means deploying more forces forward to NATO's eastern border not just the enhanced forward presence which is essentially a tripwire but more forces forward in order to be able to deal with a conventional threat from Russia without having to resort to the escalation potentially to nuclear I also take the view that we need to revise our nuclear doctrine as well this will be controversial a lot of people in the audience won't agree with this I think we should be clearer that any use of nuclear weapons even outside NATO territory like the use of weapons of mass destruction in Syria is completely unacceptable a military response is on the table doesn't necessarily mean a nuclear response but a military response must be on the table against any use of weapons of mass destruction so I'd like to see a sharper nuclear deterrent a component of nuclear deterrent and a more forward element of conventional deterrent and just to follow up on that nuclear front because you did sort of write about this in your article in The Economist earlier this year when you said about that need to be to prevent to reduce the risk of misunderstanding on the Russian side that need to kind of to articulate the fact that a nuclear attack would be met with some kind of military response in what way do you think NATO should articulate that? I think we can refresh our doctrine so it isn't simply about article 5 and the defence of territory I think it doesn't necessarily mean extending article 5 beyond NATO territory I don't think that is realistic but I think it is right that NATO commits that there would be a response should there be a use of nuclear weapons out of area that we perceive to be a threat to NATO security because it isn't only within NATO territory the precedent is the action taken by the US, France and the UK in Syria in 2018 they took chemical weapons against their own people and we took conventional military action in order to degrade their capability their chemical weapons capability their command and control systems and try and restore deterrence against the use of chemical weapons having failed to do so of course in 2013 which probably prolonged the Syrian civil war so the precedent is there and I think there should be a sharper, clearer element to NATO doctrine that we can't have conventional aggression taking place under a nuclear umbrella which is what Putin tried in the early phases of this conflict until even his friends in Beijing for example essentially walked him back from that I just think we have to be ready to remove that nuclear umbrella for conventional aggression Ruth how do you think Russia would respond to any kind of change in NATO doctrine when it comes to nuclear weapons because of course anything to do with nuclear can be perceived as escalatory even if it doesn't really change much I mean rhetorically obviously the Russian government I think we can expect them to respond very strongly indeed but in terms of significant change on the ground I think it's unlikely I mean part of the problem for the Russian government now would be the entirety of this war being kind of hinting at the possibility of nuclear use if they have red lines across and this has not happened over and over again which I think is one of the things that changed the dynamic more generally I think it's very hard to say how the Russian government is going to respond given that the Russian government now seems to be quite unstable so I think it's in order to make a judgment about that we would need to say with some certainty who the Russian government is going to be and it is not at least to me entirely clear that a year, two years down the line that the person in charge is going to be Putin and a change at the top is going to absolutely change the dynamic on nuclear issues as on everything else and how do you think the Kremlin is viewing the way that NATO has adapted so quickly, relatively speaking since February 2022 compared with the invasion and annexation of Crimea back in 2014 what do you think Russia is going to be looking at when it sees NATO allies meeting in Vilnius in July I mean clearly they were stunned this was absolutely not what they expected for all sorts of reasons for years before February 2022 the Russian government had been pushing this narrative what they themselves seem to believe that the West is weak, the West is divided the West has been undermined by liberal values and unwillingness to actually get together and defend their interests and I don't think the invasion could have happened without that prior assumption and that was partly I think it was based on a number of things based on the pretty limited response to the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 so I think they're still groping in the dark really is to how the West is going to respond in the future given that all their assumptions for years have been undermined so they're clearly going to be watching it enormously closely again what they can do about it is really unclear on the back foot comprehensively in a way that they never have been before and I don't think that they're able to adjust doctrinally in how they see the world Jeremy, I'll come to you with a question on industrial based in a sec but Peter just following on from this thought about deterrence you said an interest, we were talking in the green room before we came on about how I was just sort of saying that the Russian invasion of Ukraine by Russia was a failure of Western deterrence and I was wondering what you thought about that because you said you had a couple of thoughts well unfortunately it's true and people don't like me saying that I usually get told off by former official colleagues but I'm talking here about a failure of deterrence in a conceptual sense because the West tried to deter Putin from Ukraine and it threatened massive consequences etc etc and it didn't work it may be that it would never have worked one of the problems with deterrence is when you have what they call a symmetry of interest so one side's interest in the outcome is so much bigger than the other that they're prepared to accept costs which the other wouldn't I think it's also because this goes back to what Mark was saying you know somebody who did deterrence for years I thought we made I don't think we did it right we forgot the playbook and one of the points about the deterrence playbook is you do not preemptively take options off the table and that's what we did we said there would be no military aspect we set out our stall of economic measures but we left out the ones that were really painful of course the irony was after the invasion certain countries they can say nameless but it can remain nameless who had been blocking those measures then agree to them and so as you say the Russians then came up against a much bigger response than they were expecting but I just need to clarify in one respect so deterrence conceptually you can say didn't work that's one of the reasons that we can learn for next time NATO's deterrence has worked and when Ruth says the Russians have crossed a number of their red lines that is because NATO's deterrence has worked so the Russians have threatened all sorts of consequences if you remember the language that Putin used at four o'clock in the morning on the 24th of February last year I mean we've done what he told us not to do individual countries like Poland particularly the Baltic states and so on and they've been able to do that because NATO's deterrence posture and its nuclear deterrence posture is working it's deterring the Russians from going further so that's good we mustn't be complacent about it we must think as Mark said about ways in which we make it more effective and while I've got the floor if I may I mean I think what the most likely outcome of what's happening now regardless of who wins or what Ukraine's victory as we were discussing this morning looks like is we're going to be in to a an extended prolonged intense confrontation with Russia it will be either a relieved and proud Russia that they eventually got what they wanted which I don't think they will or they will be an angry Russia that will think it was stabbed in the back and all the rest of it and there is a risk in those circumstances that the Russian leadership might in my view you may disagree might do something that we would regard as reckless and might try and spread the conflict and so on but we deter that and I think we do that and I think there is a role for NATO here not only by updating our doctrine in some respects I probably wouldn't go quite as far as Mark I'm very cautious but also in terms of continuing to update our capabilities which will no doubt come onto but the other side of deterrence is deterrence by punishment as deterrence by denial and one aspect of that is resilience because if we get into this prolonged standoff with Russia they won't necessarily conveniently just send a tank over somebody's border they might attack us in all sorts of areas you know soft areas disinformation etc we have quite a vulnerable energy infrastructure we should be thinking about ways in which we make ourselves resilient for that it could last for decades that confrontation what is on that point of the sort of like the need to prolong deterrence do you think there is a risk because we heard from the panel this morning it was quite an upbeat really assessment of of the battlefield of what's going on the ground and it's very hard to predict how the machinations are going to play out and clearly Ukraine's about to go once again on the offensive as it has been since the beginning of the counter-offensive has been since the beginning but if Russia does hold on and there's no sense that Putin if he says in power has any intention of stopping fighting he doesn't actually really need to gain any more ground than he already has to basically undermine and defeat what Ukraine has defined itself as success which is to remove every single Russian boot off its soil and so then if you look at how the West has responded since the 24th of February last year with this like you said this massive change of policy countries like Germany like France really coming to the table boosting their defence spending and giving weapons in a way that we hadn't seen before and yet you're also exposing how hollowed out Western militaries in particular our own for example given the leading role that we play have become since the end of the Cold War and you're not really seeing the same energy going forward in the change that's needed to put our our defence industrial base on a war footing for example to ensure that when Russia does look our way or China does look our way that they see credible depths of deterrence what do you think about that well every conflict that's been fought since I mean I joined the MOD not long before the Falklands conflict every conflict has shown that the expenditure of munitions in reality is vastly greater than either the the actual either the plans or what governments were prepared to invest in so we are going to have to think rather differently about that and we might want to think I don't think it's just a matter of piling up stuff you need to look and this is more Jeremy's area than me we want to look at ways in which we move towards a more if you like flexible industrial structure I stockpile the rare components the things that you must get hold of in a hurry but look at ways in which one might I mean I'm being a policy person here I'm not worrying about the acquisition reality one might be able to adjust so that one can scale up and scale down that would mean governments being prepared for sustainability but they're not using on a day-to-day basis which they're not very comfortable about doing hasn't Covid and the health service shown that one has to be prepared to do that I was really struck by what the Polish president said about how the Polish society really understands the need for expanding the Polish armed forces and for equipping Ukraine I wonder whether the British society has that same fundamental understanding of the need to invest and secure our armed forces for example Jeremy can you offer your thoughts on what Peter was talking about about this the need for some kind of signal from government to give industry the confidence to make the investments in the expansion of production capacity perhaps at risk in the national interest is that even possible without the actual war on our streets well of course that is a government policy issue it is industry's role to support government and the government priorities but I think it's fair to say that clearer demand signals would be welcome by everybody I mean there's defence and deterrence especially it has to rely on capability and you can only provide capability with a sound industrial base that is capable of sustaining your objectives and so and we as a nation can't do it on our own that's why we have NATO that's why we're part of this sort of a multilateral Western and I think one of the reasons why I'm here is represents the industrial vision of Europe made real and the way we need to cooperate and you know post Brexit there was a bit of a wobble but we were incredibly gratified to see last week the Secretary of State mentioned that the NOD especially was going to increase its cooperation with the EU and look at new mechanisms and that from our perspective has to be a really good measure and it won't come before time because the EU is looking at certain industrial policy levers that might leave the UK vulnerable and exposed what do I mean by that I actually mean that the UK could be treated as a third party and if the UK is treated as a third party our industrial sector and our industrial base will also be treated as a third party and it will potentially miss out on the investment that is being made in the EU now and actually you know this cooperation and collaboration that is represented not just by Airbus but actually by other hugely successful companies and programs you only have to look at MBDA you only have to look at the Typhoon program we've got to make sure that we don't lose out on those capabilities because the UK fundamentally has a significant role to play in the defence of Europe not just operation, not just capability but industrially as well and we have a lot of talks with our colleagues in Europe and they are all adamant that they want the UK to play a leading role in those capabilities and they want the industrial base of UK to be part of the wider defence of Europe why? because we have incredible capabilities not just in the conventional areas of defence but in these new disruptive technologies that are represented here in London so AI, the quantum computing stuff, we can inject that into European programs to benefit Europe and to benefit the UK but are you seeing a sense that the EU is actually working at the speed of relevance when it comes to defence procurement projects because it does seem it's got history being incredibly slow and that doesn't seem to have changed in the last 15 months or so well actually I would argue that the EU has been much clearer Thierry Breton's announcement just a couple of weeks ago about 500 million investment into re-arming Europe was a major and bold step and the UK potentially will miss out on that so there are a number of things that we need to do and if I might make a specific point the US has said that it wants Europe to be more responsible for its own defence and as part of that strong policy statement it stands to reason that therefore Europe needs a strong defence industrial base and that will benefit Europe as credible allies to the US within the lens of NATO and that is not that sort of competition is not a bad thing actually you just need to look at the airbus versus Boeing scenario in a civil side because that competition has led to both companies being better both companies being stronger and the US being better so I think there is a lot to be gained from Europe having the commitment to build on what it does well we have incredible technology here sometimes we wonder or we get slightly frustrated that people think innovation equals US it does not we play and we go toe to toe with the Americans we have got fantastic intellectual capability fantastic intellectual property in the UK and Europe and we need to build on that confidence and do you think that the UK actually will fail in terms of its need to rearm fast enough and at sufficient scale and affordability if it does not team up with European projects to benefit from those economies of scale I don't think the UK is going to fail but there are some profound implications that we need to to be aware of we have got great sovereign capabilities that we need to enhance and nurture those sovereign capabilities of course are in the nuclear arena but they are also in space they are also in satellites they are in cryptography these are really really important as part of the ISR picture that everybody has so you have got that but whatever we do we need to work at this speed of relevance as everybody says and that means we need to be agile and it is not just the primes we as a company we have 2,000, 3,000 companies 2,900 companies in our supply chain of which 700 of those are SMEs now we need to work really closely with the SMEs to encourage this agility we can't do it all on our own actually we don't want to do it on our own but yes we need demand signals we need partnership that underpins what we do because we can't do it all together that partnership is across the supply chain and across borders Mark, I would be very remiss if I didn't talk about the Defence Command which is basically the mini defence review that is happening in the MOD after the integrated review refresh and decisions are happening right now we've been told this paper will come out before the end of June and the Prime Minister this morning he did talk quite fondly it sounded about how he's got a fifth generation aircraft he's got carrier strike he's investing in more nuclear submarines he wants an army of 100,000 full-time and reservists but within main building I'm sure you're hearing as those of us who follow Defence are the numbers don't add up there seems to be a vast a wish list of what people, what commanders say they need in order to achieve the ambition set out in the integrated review but they are having to work under a pretty constrained financial envelope especially over the next couple of years given that this new £5 billion extra that was given is well short of what the MOD asked for and two being sucked up mainly by the nuclear enterprise so if you were still in your previous job what would you be advising well actually so right at the beginning of the first integrated review and I was still there as we kicked that process off I got the Defence Chiefs some of the top civil servants in Defence together and said what we're not going to do this time is allow fantasy efficiencies to be the balancing item because that's what had happened over several reviews there was a long list of capability commitments headline commitments to the size of the army the number of aircraft, the number of frigates, all of that kind of thing without the resources to develop and deploy those effectively and the result was it's called suppression rather elegant word what it means is cuts to training to equipment, to ordnance and so it means that we have over 100 aircraft of a particular type but only ordnance for a couple of dozen of them over a few days to go to Peter's earlier point about the use of ordnance in conflict we have an under-trained and under-exercised army we have frigates an entire class of frigates nearly all of which were under maintenance at one point and so what we agreed among the military chiefs and the professionals if you like was we would go to ministers and say for whatever level of resources you are prepared to commit this is what we think we need and this is if you like the first rate capability we can provide at whatever scale rather than committing to larger numbers but in effect therefore having them fundamentally second rate because they weren't over time at least because capability was being eroded and the truth is if we go to two and a quarter, two and a half percent of GDP in defence nearly all of that will be used up dealing with some of the things John Healy was talking about earlier dealing with military housing dealing with building the latent capability in the defence supply chain that we need to be able to scale up as Peter says you don't want stockpiles rusting you want to be able to scale up supply quickly but that costs money ensuring that people are fully trained that they're able to go on exercise that the ships are properly maintained that we have enough ordnance available for a crisis and so on that will all be gone at two and a half percent two and a half percent is not going to buy us a bigger army or larger numbers and we have to be honest with ourselves that there is a difference between inventory and capability and what we should be doing at whatever level of resources the country can afford aiming for a capability that is absolutely first rate at whatever scale we can commit to and that's what I would be advising what would that look like then well it would probably look like the sort of numbers that we're hearing about already so of course I'd like to see I'd like to see us have a bigger army I'd like to see us have more capability but that is going to cost money and if we're prepared to go to three percent of GDP on defence or as I've argued four percent of GDP on national security which would kind of be about three on defence about point seven on development the rest going on intelligence diplomacy and all the other things but actually flexing within a national security budget because you've got to deal with new threats cyber and all the rest of it if we were willing to do that then of course we'd be able to build more capacity as well as capability but if we decide we can afford two and a quarter two and a half percent of GDP on defence then what we should be doing is saying right what is the absolute world class version of each element of our force package as part of NATO that we can deliver for that and if that means an army of 70,000 rather an army of 100,000 that's fully trained properly equipped ready to go able to deploy then one of 100,000 that actually has its training budget cut and has substandard housing and morale problems and all the rest of it I'd rather have 100,000 army that could do all of that too but that's going to cost more money and that's what we should be doing as professionals Ruth what do you think looking at the US a bit on this what do you think the US is thinking when it looks to its European allies it looks to the NATO summit it looks at what's being offered do you think that it will look at Europe as stepping up in a way that not just the previous president Donald Trump had demanded but that all presidents have to a relative extent wanted Europe to do more in terms of being able to defend itself and not just be this sort of drain on US military resource so I mean I think two things firstly I think it depends who we're talking about in the US because clearly there are sections of the US kind of politically elite who are never going to be convinced I think the second issue is which part of Europe and I think one of the things that's become clear in the last few years and has become particularly clear since February last year is that Europe is not a single institution in this regard that different states have different levels of commitment clearly the Biden administration is aware of this the Trump administration was aware of this they almost the only kind of positive things they have to say about Europe were really about Poland and Polish levels of commitment so I'm sure there is a continuing dissatisfaction with some levels of defence spending across the European members of NATO to the extent that the war has changed that I'm sure that's welcome but clearly it hasn't changed it very much in the case of some states and that's going to continue to be an irritant and obviously if there is, particularly if there is a change of administration after 2024 that is that's going to be a very difficult issue for NATO I think if we have a return to President Trump or somebody like President Trump making a continuing case for US engagement in NATO particularly at the levels that they have done so far I think it's going to be much harder Thank you I realised I've run out of time for my question so if someone, if people in the audience have questions please put your hand up the gentleman at the back with his hand just there Min Campbell Min Campbell, sorry Thank you I'm a member of the United Kingdom delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly which prompt my question When we heard that Sweden and Finland wanted to join NATO there was a universal welcome Would any of the panel be willing to comment on the continuing obstacle in relation to Sweden to full membership of NATO caused by the attitude of Turkey You would like that one All I would notice I think the second round of the Turkish presidential election is on the 28th of May So pretty much regardless of who wins there might be time to straighten up this situation by the time of the Vilnius Summit Personally I know it wasn't on the President's wish list for the summit I think confirming Sweden as a member of the Alliance we've gone with the best things that could come out of that summit Positive noises from the British really I think on that question Thank you A gentleman here at the front Thanks David Lidington, Chairman of Lucy Can I push further on the question about United States policy How seriously do the panel rate the chances of a future President or Congress in the future significantly weakening the US commitment to the security of Europe given isolationism and the priority of the Indo-Pacific and what should the European Allies do to try to mitigate that risk and perhaps in particular would it help would it be dangerous to talk about creating a European pillar of the Atlantic Alliance that was capable of acting without the United States leadership if necessary So obviously I have views I'm sure others do as well but I think it's something that we need to be concerned about I personally would be surprised if even a second administration of President Trump saw a significant withdrawal by the US from NATO and one of the reasons for that is that on NATO and indeed on Russia and on Ukraine Trump is still an outlier in his own party now that's changing but it would require I think agreement in a majority Republican Congress both houses and the presidency and that's not something that historically happens very often even when you have a majority in Congress that is of the same party as the president it's actually quite difficult to get Congress to agree to anything particularly anything that significant and we saw that by way of example when a Republican majority House of Representatives and Senate in I think 2018 actually can pass legislation to stop Trump rolling back sanctions against Russia and pass it by a huge majority so even people who had come in being elected at the same time as Trump were voting to block the president on that so I this is not a council for complacency I do think certain states in particular need to send a much clearer signal that they have heard American long standing complaints and they are going to step up and do something about it but I would be surprised I would be very surprised if the US withdrawals from NATO already scales down I think the big to me the big danger is anxiety about that and European states anticipating it and potentially moving away in various ways from NATO and forming additional security relationships and that I think then it becomes very difficult a whole range of things become difficult including deterrents I think Yeah I mean three points and David you and I have talked about this before I think first as Ruth has just indicated President Trump made this vivid but this concern in the United States that Europe is not doing enough for its own defense predates him actually one of the most alliance friendly defense secretaries actually Trump's first defense secretary Jim Mattis said we can't care more about your own security than you do and the American Pacific tilt began under President Obama so I think it is a real trend isolationism and certainly the Pacific focus is a real trend in American politics and it isn't the case we should only worry about a formal American position to dilute the commitment to NATO it's just that actually changing resources and moving troops around and talking as they are at the moment or as some of the Republicans are at the moment about winding down support for Ukraine and imposing a peace deal within 24 hours all of that has an immediate effect what can Europe do about it well the best way to keep the Americans in is to do more ourselves that is quite clear and that doesn't just mean everybody spending more it means spending it more effectively and as you've indicated David it's integrated capability rather than 28 or 29 separate mini full spectrum forces so we need to really think as the European pillar of NATO and by that I mean European not the EU although there's obviously a big overlap but the European pillar of NATO how do we collectively create capability and too often the discussion in this country is what are we going to do how big is our army going to be how big is our our forces going to be wherever they might be deployed and actually in this theatre what is NATO need and what are we going to contribute to that and recognise that burden sharing means that everyone is going to do a bit of everything that actually if Poland is going to build the biggest army in Western Europe well then they can do that and we may be able to do other other things and on the whole question of the politics of this in the end the biggest threat to our national security in this theatre is lack of European capability it's not too much and if politically European are continental neighbours or many of them need to stick an EU flag on it in order to be able to win the argument with their own publics well let's figure out a way of letting them do that diplomats and ministers can I think find a way somehow of navigating the EU-NATO relationship that if that's what they need to build more capability it's part of supporting NATO rather than turning into something competitive with it what Ukraine has demonstrated is the ideas that some or other there's going to be an alternative to NATO are nuts and and anything any European does to encourage that is really damaging so I think we should just relax a bit about that and allow everyone to manage their own politics and put whatever flag they want on it as long as it's available to NATO Jeremy you wanted to come in can I just follow up on something that Mark just said about spending the defence pound as it were or Euro more effectively I mean surely a way to make the most of this is in co-operation and actually if you're going to make co-operation partnering work you need critical mass you need budgets they need to put the budget in somewhere be it a company or a country that means you then share the R&D to make sure that you get the quality the technology of the project if you share the R&D it's that much better underpinning all of this is of course the fact that we still need to be competitive we still need to make as you were saying the best products we can in the world but if we do that and we've got numerous examples of success that then leads to export success and exports then offset that defence pound and that investment even further so it's a virtuous circle co-operating with our allies and I think we in Europe are pretty good at that I just add one point very quickly I mean Heather mentioned it Heather Williams first thing this morning increasingly the talk in Washington is about the two-pair problem and that discussion is going to go on and I think it means inevitably that in 10-15 years time if we're still in this confrontation with Russia then a greater burden of deterring Russia is going to fall on the Europeans and actually given that you've all spoken I'll speak to you I thought a little interesting vignette from the Madrid summit last year was that obviously the full-scale war in Ukraine was raging is still raging but was really quite fresh then and it was absolutely the burning issue on the agenda for all the European allies but it was very notable that when President Biden obviously the US President is the big person in the room when it comes to NATO when he gave his end of summit press conference the two issues that he wanted to focus on were first of all domestic road versus way they just had the announcement about abortion and the second about China and there was a real division and a real sense within NATO about the relative balance that needs to be focused on China versus Russia and that is also an area of division there's a gentleman right at the back who's been very patient waving his hand around now I'm Ambassador of Reviewing I probably might still continue to question you on Vilnius summit in Madrid the decision you mentioned in Madrid last year the decision was that when and where is necessary NATO will increase substantially the presence in the Eastern flank so we believe in Vilnius but probably not only in Vilnius that time is ripe to increase so how do you feel from your perspective should we increase substantially NATO presence in the Eastern flank to protect NATO from the East thank you I can go first yes is the short answer and it goes to the earlier point Min Camber was asking about the accession of Sweden and Finland these are two really serious military powers it's going to double NATO's border Finland's accession with double NATO's border with Russia and even if you include Belarus it's an extra third and part of what we need to do in the Northern flank North of you is hold significant Russian forces at risk in order that by deploying forward elsewhere we can deter Russian adventurism elsewhere so we need to use that addition to NATO's capability in the North in order to put further pressure on Russia across their entire flank and I think one of the best innovations in the past few years was the joint expeditionary force which brings together the Nordic and Baltic nations and the UK in a genuinely integrated capability where forces are not all trying to do a bit of everything but actually are bringing different capabilities together into something that is greater the hold is greater than the sum of the parts and that's the kind of model we should be applying elsewhere in NATO Peter I agree with that I would just say that I don't think we should get too hung up you know, brigades or whatever I mean what we should be looking at is ways of making enhanced forward presence more resilient tougher, harder which means looking at its logistics and all of those things the boring but necessary stuff that doesn't get enough attention we should also be looking at how we can best reinforce in a crisis and I'm rather hoping that at some point the UK will be admitted to the PESCO military mobility project but I think that will make a big contribution to that we're almost out of time and there's still quite a few questions gentlemen I took the back there with his hand up and then if we could just also take we'll just take three if that's okay and then you can pick and choose because then we'll be out of time so David Richards there and then George over there Peter Wilson Smith from Meritus Consultants the Polish president about the role Poland can play in engaging with Africa I mean one of the striking and depressing things about the Ukraine war is that we in the west have lost the global south I mean only about 40 countries have imposed sanctions against Russia you talk to people in Africa and they say the west is hypocritical what they draw comparisons with us marching into Iraq and so on and they may not be particularly supporting Russia but they're not supporting Western policy in Ukraine against Russia how much does this matter to European security what's gone wrong and what should we do about it thank you David I was told I was only allowed one question a day so I'm going to go for another I'm not a great fan of the integrated review or the refresh in large part I did not come to terms with the UK's straightened economic circumstances and the strategy that's undeliverable unachievable is very dangerous what worries me today is that our armed forces not in good Nick I can absolutely reinforce what the panel have said although I think it's even worse than perhaps Peter Watkins believes but we're spread all over the place as possible as a chief of defence or whoever one's talking about is doing all this planning to be able to do anything properly I'd like to ask the panel whether we should not now go back as I think we should have done and allow the UK to focus on NATO and the Euro-Atlantic and the armed forces focus on that area and doing our bit properly within NATO and in the context of Ukraine rather than being diverted to take part in wars against China or whatever it is that they're speculating about allowing in the process and this is a key American forces to focus on China on our collective behalf while we all do much more in Europe and last question George Brown is National Security College in Australia I want to ask the panel to go back to the question of what victory looks like in Ukraine. President Zelensky has understandably been very steadfast in saying it means every Russian boot off Ukrainian soil let it be assumed that the summer offensive or counter offensive is effective that the Russian troops are repelled and ultimately whenever driven from eastern and northern Ukraine but not from Crimea there are different issues including historical issues and military issues concerning Crimea I'd be interested in knowing the panel's thoughts about whether on that scenario there might be a weakening of the will at least among the Europeans or indeed the Americans when it comes to declaring a victory Thank you so three big questions three short answers please for the panel who wants to do Global South Anyone? Peter, thank you Well I do think it's important and I think and possibly an earlier speaker did this we take a bit too much false comfort from the fact that those UN General Assembly voting figures haven't moved very much because a lot of countries are sitting on the fence and I think there is more that we could be doing to persuade those countries that what Russia has done is basically wrong I mean people use the term the rules based international system which is seen as a western construct and therefore the Global South aren't very sympathetic to it but actually Russia's war contravened the basic principles of the UN Charter and that has been set out very well we'll see a lecture another place in this part of London by Roy Allison and I think that message needs to be reinforced much more strongly than it has been Ruth don't you take that question from David Richards about whether the integrated review has got it wrong No you don't I would prefer to answer the last question Can you do the integrated review had they got it wrong should we actually ditch in the Pacific for America to deal with NATO and anti-security It's an attractive argument and I have a lot of sympathy with it but David look you and I both made our reputation in expeditionary campaigns you over several and me over a couple and the truth is that if you're dealing with national security priorities you don't really get to choose what comes at you and so the next great crisis might be in the end of Pacific or it might be something else that blows up somewhere to Europe south and east and we have to get back into an expeditionary effort of some kind circumstances for that and we like to think we can determine which threat we're going to face and I think it's I think it's too tempting my own view is that the USP if you like of the British armed forces is to be able to be deployable flexibly and I think having like expeditionary type capabilities that can be used in the European or the Euro-Atlantic theatre is probably something probably only the UK maybe France but of the European nations the UK can probably do better than anyone and that means that you know we are just recreating the British army the Rhine etc and having people sitting around waiting for the threat from Russia we can deploy those forces out of area if necessary if there are other crises but they need to be capable of course of being deployed back into the Euro-Atlantic area at the disposal of SACA if necessary and that's something I say no other European nation can really quite do to the same extent so that's the sort of approach I'd take to the defence side and I think if you broaden it out then I don't think it has to be a binary choice I thought after you've spoken George was coming after we might get the counterpoint on the Orcas on the Orcas deal because that's about defence capability as much as it's about and defence industrial capability as much as it's about operational deployment we've exceeded the Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement there are lots of other elements to our national security and national capabilities that we could can deploy into the Indo-Pacific fastest growth areas in the world which doesn't necessarily mean skewing our defence around I just think we need we can take a smart approach to it I absolutely agree on the Global South point by the way can you agree with me? that is fundamentally about China and we need to the West needs to re-engage in the Global South with respect recognising they are not going to they're not going to make a binary choice they've rediscovered the appeal of non-alignment it is in their interests to do so and we need to recognise that reality and be a lot smarter and a lot more engaged about it but it's fundamentally about China not about Russia Ruth what does victory look like in Ukraine? well I mean in about a minute I certainly think it is much less the case than it was at the start of the war that Crimea is treated differently I think you know in the early weeks and months of the war there was a perception certainly I encountered it among policymakers across Europe actually but Crimea was a separate case somehow and I think that's eroded and I think one of the reasons that it's eroded well partly because it is clear that Ukraine has much greater kind of military effectiveness than was expected at the beginning partly because Russia has not stepped up you know when its red lines have been crossed in the way it's threatened to do all of which create the conditions for thinking about Crimea but I think for all of us, not just for Ukraine I think for all of us actually victory does look like Ukraine going back to its legally recognised 1991 borders and one of the reasons for that very importantly for all the rest of us is that as long I think as long as Russia is in Crimea it continues to pose significant threat to the Black Sea region as a whole which means it continues to pose a significant security threat to NATO but there has been a lot of talk since the start of the war amongst people like John Mirsheimer and others that the cause of the invasion, entirely incorrectly that the cause of the invasion was a NATO expansion actually the great permissive cause of this war was that Russia was allowed in a 1997 agreement with Ukraine to carry on basing the Black Sea fleet in Crimea and that was what created the possibility for the war as it's unfolded it was what created the annexation of Crimea in 2014 as long as Russia is in Crimea it is going to be a threat to Ukrainian security but to European security in all sorts of ways so I think for me at least that's what victory looks like I want to hope you would join me in thanking the panellists for a really excellent discussion and I know we are three minutes over time but we did start a little bit late so I actually think I kept within my hour and this is the end of day one of the London Defence Conference and I hope you'll all be back again for day two when amongst many sparkling war panels we also have the Swedish Defence Minister and other speakers for you thank you